Eddie Izzard

Edward John Izzard is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and political activist. His comedic style takes the form of rambling whimsical monologues and self-referential pantomime.

He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, Valkyrie, and Victoria & Abdul among other movies. He has also worked as a voice actor in The Wild, Igor, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Cars 2, The Lego Batman Movie, Abominable, and many others.

Izzard has won numerous awards including a Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program for his comedy special Dress to Kill, in 2000. Izzard's website won the Yahoo People's Choice Award and earned the Webby Award.

In 2009, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief despite having no history of long-distance running.

Izzard has campaigned for various causes and has been a Labour Party activist for most of his adult life. He twice ran for a seat on Labour's National Executive Committee. When Christine Shawcroft resigned in March 2018, he took her place by default but was not re-elected in that summer's NEC elections.

Izzard describes himself as a "transgender guy" having "boy genetics and girl genetics". In the past when terminology was different, Izzard identified as a transvestite, and has also called himself "a lesbian trapped in a man's body" , a "male lesbian", and "a complete boy plus half girl".

Izzard's stance is that the way he dresses is neither part of his performance nor a sexual fetish. He said "I don't call it drag; I don't even call it cross-dressing. It's just wearing a dress. ... It's not about artifice. It's about me just expressing myself." He has expressed a personal conviction that being transgender is caused by genetics and that someday this will be scientifically proven, having gone so far as to have his own genome sequenced.

Quotes
"I think when LGBT gets really boring then we've made it, because it shouldn't be, “You're gay? Oh my god! You're transgender? Oh my god!” It should just be, “You're LGBT? Fine. Are you any good at what you do—accounting, photography, playing the banjo? How are you at that?” Our sexuality should be a thing that's there, but not the front signpost."

"I have boy mode and girl mode. I am kind of gender fluid. I want to express both sides of myself, which has always been there. I am a tomboy and tomgirl kind of person."

"If you look at a tiger, you go "ooh tiger", you don't go "a boy tiger or girl tiger?". We are obsessed by the genders because we grow up in one gender or another. But no other animal is obsessed by our gender. They don't give a monkey's about our gender. [...] How you self-identify, who you fancy, matters not one whit. What do you do in life? What do you create? What do you add to the human existence?"