Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Lenny Henry, Order of the British Empire|CBE (born
Lenny Hinton on August 29, 1958 in Dudley, West
Midlands (county)|West Midlands) is a British entertainer, whose family moved to
the UK from Jamaica in the 1950s.

Henry studied at Bluecoat Secondary Modern School,
WR Tewson School, and Preston College, and has
since obtained a degree in English literature from
the Open University.

His earliest television|TV appearances were on the
New Faces TV talent show in the 1970s where he was
a repeat winner. His formative years were in
working men's clubs where his unique act - a young
black man impersonating white characters such as
Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em - gave
him an edge in what were racially divisive times.
Subsequently he was a comedy performer on The
Black and White Minstrel Show.

Later he appeared on the children's programme
Tiswas and subsequently the show Three of a Kind
with comedians Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield
(comedian)|David Copperfield. Around this time he
met his future wife, Dawn French, who encouraged
him to move over to the fledgling alternative
comedy scene, where he established a career as a
stand-up comedy performer and character comedian.
He introduced characters which both mocked and
celebrated black British culture, such as
Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (a Barry White-a-like),
Brixton pirate radio disc jockey|DJ Delbert
Wilkins and Trevor MacDoughnut (a spoof on Trevor
McDonald). Much of his stand-up material, which
was enormously popular on recorded vinyl
record|LP, owed much to the writing abilities of
Kim Fuller.

Henry's TV work started principally with his own
self-titled show, which has appeared in variant
forms ever since. He was also a part-time member
of The Comic Strip.

In the early 1990s, Henry was lured to Hollywood
to star in the film True Identity, in which his
character spent most of the film pretending to be
a white person in order to avoid organised
crime|the mob.
The film was not successful, and it has been
suggested that part of the problem was that the
film's producers didn't really understand Henry
and used him in a project that wasn't a good match
for his talents.

Henry is perhaps best known to modern audiences as
the choleric chef of the comedy|comedic 1990s
television series Chef!. In 1999 he also had a
successful straight-acting lead role in the BBC
drama Hope And Glory and tried his hand at soul
singing, appearing, for example, as a back-up
singer on Kate Bush's last recorded album in 1993.
He would later say that both moves were not
showing him at his best and that he felt most
comfortable with character comedy, returning to
the BBC to do Lenny Henry in Pieces, a
character-based comedy sketch comedy|sketch show.
He followed this with The Lenny Henry Show in
which he combined stand-up, character sketches and
song parodies.

In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of
the Observer's 50 funniest|50 funniest acts in
British comedy.

He married comedy actress Dawn French on October
20, 1984. They have an adoption|adopted daughter.

Henry is also one of the celebrities most
associated with the British Comic Relief charity
organisation along with Griff Rhys Jones.

He lent his voice to the "shrunken head" on the
Knight Bus in the 2004 movie Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban (movie)|Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban.

==Biography==
*Lenny Henry - A Biography, Jonathan Margolis
(Orion (publishers)|Orion, 1996)

==Filmography==
(incomplete)

*True Identity (1991)
*Bernard and the Genie (1991)
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(movie)|Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(2004)