Lee Evans

Lee Evans (born Lee John Martin Evans, 25 February 1964) is a British former comedian, actor, musician, singer and writer. He co-founded the production company Little Mo Films with Addison Cresswell, who was also his agent. Evans became one of the United Kingdom's most popular stand-up comedians, with his Roadrunner tour grossing £12.9 million. He was born in the Avonmouth suburb of Bristol to an Irish mother and a Welsh father who was himself a comedian, musician and impressionist, and attended The Billericay School in Essex.

Evans rose to fame during the 1990s with his energetic stage performances and physical observational comedy, drawing comparisons with Norman Wisdom. In 1993 he won the Perrier Comedy Award for his work at the Edinburgh Festival, and in November 2005 he broke the world record for a solo act performing to the biggest comedy audience, playing to 10,108 people at the Manchester Arena. The DVD of his Big - Live at the O2 show became the highest-selling Christmas DVD in the UK in 2008, later surpassed by his own Monsters Tour DVD in 2014.

Evans made his cinema debut with the Peter Chelsom comedy Funny Bones (1995), earning the Paris Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and went on to appear in Hollywood films including The Fifth Element (1997), Mouse Hunt (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998) and The Medallion (2003). He announced his retirement from stand-up comedy in November 2014, briefly returning in 2017 to star in plays by William Shakespeare and Harold Pinter. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, he can play instruments including the guitar, bass, keyboards, piano, mandolin, ukulele and drums.