Background and career
Russell Edward Brand (born 4 June 1975) is an English comedian, actor, podcaster, and media personality. He was initially a stand-up comedian and radio and television presenter in the UK, where he rose to prominence as the host of Big Brother's Big Mouth, a spin-off of the reality television series Big Brother broadcast on E4. He had his first major film role in the British comedy St Trinian's (2007), after which he starred in the Hollywood comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Arthur (2011), and Rock of Ages (2012). He has released several stand-up specials, including Scandalous (2009), Messiah Complex (2013), and Brandemic (2023). He hosted his own radio show The Russell Brand Show (2006–2008, 2010, 2013, 2017) and also hosts the podcasts Stay Free with Russell Brand and Under the Skin with Russell Brand. He has received three British Comedy Awards and a nomination for a BAFTA Award. Over the course of his career, Brand has attracted frequent media coverage for his promiscuity, drug use, political views, provocative behaviour, dismissal from MTV, and resignation from the BBC amid a prank call controversy. Following his guest-editorship of an edition of the British political weekly New Statesman in 2013, Brand gained further prominence for his political and social activism, focusing on wealth inequality, drug addiction, corporate capitalism, climate change, and mainstream media bias. In 2014, he launched his political-comedy web series The Trews on YouTube, released a book entitled Revolution, and acted in the documentary The Emperor's New Clothes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brand's YouTube channel experienced an increase in activity and a shift in political direction and was accused of promoting COVID denialism and conspiracy theories. In September 2023, following a joint investigation by The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4's documentary series Dispatches, five women publicly accused Brand of sexual assault and sexual and emotional abuse. The allegations concern incidents between 2006 and 2013 and were featured in the Dispatches episode Russell Brand: In Plain Sight. Later, another allegation was made to the Metropolitan Police of a sexual assault in 2003. Brand has denied all of the allegations and promoted conspiracy theories regarding them. He was subsequently charged with multiple counts of rape, oral rape, indecent assault, and sexual assault, and his trial began in October 2026. Following the initial charges, three further allegations of sexual violence were reported to the Metropolitan Police. In addition, in April 2025, Brand was reported to be the subject of a civil lawsuit filed in New York state accusing him of sexual assault during the 2010 filming of Arthur, naming Warner Bros. Discovery and others as co-defendants.
Russell Edward Brand was born on 4 June 1975 at Orsett Hospital in Grays, Essex, England. He is the only child of Barbara Elizabeth (née Nichols) and photographer Ronald Henry Brand. Brand's parents separated when he was six months old, and he was raised by his mother. When Brand was eight, his mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and then breast cancer one year later. While she underwent treatment, Brand lived with relatives. When he was 14, he developed bulimia nervosa. At age 16, Brand left home because of disagreements with his mother's partner. He then started to use illegal drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines, LSD, and ecstasy. Brand has stated that he had a "strange relationship" with his father, whom he saw sporadically and who took him to visit prostitutes during a trip to Thailand when Brand was a teenager. He made his theatrical debut at the age of 15 in a school production of Bugsy Malone and then began work as a film extra. Brand attended Grays School, and in 1991 he was accepted into the Italia Conti Academy, with his first year of tuition funded by Essex County Council. After that first year, Brand was expelled for illegal drug use and poor attendance. Brand has said that he was sexually abused by a tutor.
Brand performed stand-up at the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year final in 2000. Although he finished fourth, his performance attracted the attention of agent Nigel Klarfeld of Bound and Gagged Comedy Ltd. That year, he also made his Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut as one-third of the stand-up show Pablo Diablo's Cryptic Triptych, alongside ventriloquist Mark Felgate and Anglo-Iranian comic Shaparak Khorsandi. In 2004, Brand took his first one-man show, the confessional Better Now, to the Edinburgh Festival, giving an account of his heroin addiction. He returned the following year with Eroticised Humour. He launched his first nationwide tour, Shame, in 2006. Brand drew on embarrassing incidents in his own life and the coverage about him in the tabloid press. The show was released on DVD as Russell Brand: Live. Brand appeared in a sketch and performed stand-up at Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Ball in 2006 and again at the 2012 edition at Radio City Music Hall. In March 2007, Brand co-hosted an evening of the Teenage Cancer Trust gigs with Noel Fielding. In December 2007, Brand performed for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip as an act in the 2007 Royal Variety Performance. His second nationwide tour, in 2007, was called Russell Brand: Only Joking and released on DVD as Russell Brand: Doin' Life. Brand began performing in the US and recorded a special for Comedy Central titled Russell Brand in New York, which aired in March 2009. Brand began touring the UK, America and Australia from January to April 2009 on a tour called Russell Brand: Scandalous. In October, four additional dates were scheduled for November to raise money for Focus 12, the drug rehabilitation charity of which Brand was a patron until its closure. In 2013, Brand presented and toured his comedy show Messiah Complex, in which he tackled advertising, the laws on drug addiction and the portrayal of his heroes, such as Gandhi, Guevara, Malcolm X and Jesus, and how he is, in comically contrived ways, similar to them. In January 2017, Brand announced his new tour Re:Birth, which debuted in April 2017 and was scheduled to run through November 2018. However, on 30 April 2018, he was forced to cancel the remaining dates after his mother was critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. Russell Brand: Re:Birth, which was filmed in London in April 2018, was released as a stand-up comedy film on Netflix on 4 December 2018. Over the years, Brand has named Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Peter Cook, Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock, Jack Kerouac, Stewart Lee, Tenacious D, Eddie Murphy, and Monty Python among his comedic influences. In choosing one comedy film among his five favourite movies, he picked Monty Python's Life of Brian. In 2009, he appeared in the television documentary, Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Lawyers Cut). During a live show at the Royal & Derngate theatre in Northampton in 2008, Brand made a hoax call to police claiming that he had seen a man responsible for a series of assaults. He pretended to be a witness to assaults named Sarah. Northamptonshire Police decided not to prosecute and said they would discourage making such calls. The call was condemned by Lynda Yorke of Leicester Rape Crisis Centre, who said: "I don't think that's particularly amusing. It's in very poor taste. The issue of sexual assault is often belittled and such callous behaviour is extremely hurtful to the victims." James Donaghy of The Guardian said it showed "catastrophically poor judgment". Brand apologised for the call. Brand has incorporated many of his controversial public acts into his comedic material. In March 2015, a biographical documentary was released called Brand: A Second Coming.
Brand's first presenting role came in 2000 as a video journalist on MTV UK: he presented Dancefloor Chart (touring nightclubs in Britain and Ibiza) and hosted the tea-time request show Select. Brand was dismissed several days after coming to work dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the 11 September 2001 attacks and bringing his drug dealer to the MTV studios. After leaving MTV, Brand starred in RE:Brand, a documentary and comedy television programme that aimed to explore cultural taboos. It was conceived, written, and hosted by Brand, with the help of his comic partner on many projects, Matt Morgan. The series was shown on the now-defunct digital satellite channel UK Play in 2002. In 2004, Brand hosted Big Brother's Eforum on E4, a sister show to Big Brother 5. The show gave celebrity guests and the public the chance to have their say on the goings-on inside the Big Brother house. For Big Brother 6, the show's name changed to Big Brother's Big Mouth. Following Celebrity Big Brother 5, Brand said he would not return to host the Big Brother 8 series of Big Brother's Big Mouth. In a statement, Brand thanked all the producers for "taking the risk of employing an ex-junkie twerp" to front the show. Of his time presenting the show, he said: "The three years I've spent on Big Brother's Big Mouth have been an unprecedented joy". Brand hosted a one-off special called Big Brother According to Russell Brand, in which Brand took a surreal, sideways look at Big Brother through the ages. On 8 January 2008, Brand was the fifth celebrity to "hijack" the Big Brother house, in the E4 show Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. Brand returned to MTV in early 2006 as presenter of the chat show 1 Leicester Square, which had its broadcast time adjusted to accommodate more adult-oriented content. Guests included Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, The Mighty Boosh, and Boy George, and a second series began in September 2006 on MTV. After Big Brother 7 finished, Brand presented a debate show called Russell Brand's Got Issues, on E4. The viewing figures for the first episode were seen as disappointing, being beaten by nearly all of E4's main multi-channel rivals, despite a big publicity and promotional campaign for the show. The poor ratings prompted the network to repackage the show as The Russell Brand Show and move it to Channel 4. The first episode was broadcast on 24 November 2006 on Channel 4, and it ran for five weeks. Brand hosted the 2007 Brit Awards and presented Oasis with an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award at the event. He also hosted one hour of Comic Relief. On 7 July 2007, he presented at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium, London.
On 12 December 2007, BBC Four aired Russell Brand On the Road, a documentary presented by Brand and Matt Morgan about the writer Jack Kerouac and his novel On the Road. Brand returned to Channel 4 to host Russell Brand's Ponderland, in which he discussed topics like childhood and science through stand-up comedy. The show first aired on 22 October 2007 and continued for the next five nights. A second series began on 30 October 2008. The show ran for 12 episodes over the two series. Brand was later announced as the host of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), which drew scepticism from the American media, as he was relatively unknown to the American public. Brand's appearance led to controversy for numerous reasons. He said the night "marked the launch of a very new Britney Spears era", referring to it as "the resurrection of [Spears]". He also said, "If there was a female Christ, it's Britney". Brand implored the audience to elect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and later called then–U.S. President George W. Bush "a retarded cowboy fella", who, in England, "wouldn't be trusted with scissors". He also made several references to the purity rings worn by the Jonas Brothers, but apologised for the comments later in the show. His comments at the 2008 MTV VMAs led to Brand receiving death threats from some offended viewers. Brand claimed that MTV asked him to host the 2009 awards after the ratings for the 2008 show were 20 per cent higher than the previous year. Also in 2008, Brand hosted a one-off stand-up comedy show called Comedy Live Presents: Russell Brand and Friends, which was shown on Channel 4 on 25 January 2008. Brand returned to host the 2009 MTV VMAs, on 13 September 2009, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The ratings for the 2009 show were the best since the 2004 VMAs. On 12 February 2011, Brand guest hosted an episode of the hit American sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. In 2012, he hosted the MTV Movie Awards and Brand X with Russell Brand, a late-night talk show on FX that received lukewarm reviews and middling ratings. The show was cancelled in 2013 after running for two seasons.
In 1994, while still a teenager, Brand appeared in episodes of The Bill and the children's adventure series Mud. In 2002, Brand appeared on the TV shows Cruise of the Gods and White Teeth. In 2005, he played Tommy in the BBC sitcom Blessed, which was written and directed by Ben Elton. Brand auditioned for the part of Super Hans in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show; the role eventually went to Matt King. In 2007, Brand appeared in Cold Blood for ITV, playing an ex-con called Ally. Brand played a recovering crack addict named Terry in the pilot for the ITV comedy The Abbey, written by Morwenna Banks. He voiced an Earth Guardian in Robbie the Reindeer in Close Encounters of the Herd Kind. Brand appeared in a small role in the 2006 film Penelope, though his first major film role was as Flash Harry in the 2007 comedy St Trinian's. Brand achieved American fame when he starred in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he played rock star Aldous Snow, the boyfriend of the title character (played by Kristen Bell). Brand received rave reviews for his performance as Snow, and he revealed the character was changed from an author to a rock star because of his audition. Brand starred alongside Adam Sandler in the Disney film Bedtime Stories, which was released on 25 December 2008. In 2010, he reprised the role of Aldous Snow for a buddy comedy titled Get Him to the Greek, co-starring Jonah Hill, which also reunited him with Forgetting Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller and producer Judd Apatow for the film. Brand starred in Julie Taymor's 2010 version of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, as Trinculo. In 2010, Brand voiced Dr. Nefario in the Universal and Illumination movie Despicable Me, and reprised the role in the 2013 sequel and the 2022 prequel film Minions: The Rise of Gru. Brand also guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Angry Dad: The Movie" as himself. Brand also starred in the April 2011 live action/CGI animated film Hop with James Marsden, voicing the film's protagonist E.B. Hop opened at number one at the Friday box office in the US, earning $11.4 million. The same month, he played the title character in a remake of Arthur, written by Peter Baynham, which was a box office disappointment. Brand starred as Lonny in a film adaptation of the 1980s-set musical Rock Of Ages, released in cinemas in June 2012. After appearing as William Carr in the Diablo Cody film Paradise (2013), Brand went on hiatus from acting. His return role was as the villainous Creek in the DreamWorks animated film Trolls (2016), followed by his portrayal of God in the comedy Army of One (2016) with Nicolas Cage. In 2018 and 2019, he portrayed Sports X Network founder Lance Klians in a recurring arc in the final two seasons of the HBO series Ballers. Brand appeared as Tristan Trent in the 2020 fantasy film Four Kids and It, and in 2022 played Linus Windlesham in Kenneth Branagh's remake of Death on the Nile. Other projects Brand has been tied to include a remake of Drop Dead Fred, an Adam Sandler-produced film about a con man posing as a priest tentatively entitled Bad Father, co-written by Brand and Matt Morgan; and a film adaptation of the children's television programme Rentaghost, a project that was picked up by Fox Studios in 2011 with Ben Stiller attached.
