On June 25, 1961, Ricky Dene Gervais was born. He is an actor, director, and writer from England. He is best known for co-creating, co-writing, and acting in The Office (2001–2003), a British mockumentary sitcom. He has been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and has won seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the Rose d’Or twice (2006 and 2019). He was ranked No. 11 on Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups list in 2007, and No. 3 in 2010. He was included in the Time 100 list of the World’s Most Influential People in 2010.
Gervais began his career in the music business. In the 1980s, he tried his hand at pop stardom as the singer of Seona Dancing, a new-wave act, and managed the then-unknown band Suede before turning to comedy. Between 1998 and 2000, he was a regular on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show, where he earned a reputation as an outspoken and sharp-witted social agitator. Meet Ricky Gervais, a Channel 4 mock discussion show, that premiered in 2000. He rose to greater mainstream fame the following year with his BBC mock documentary series The Office, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Stephen Merchant, and in which he played the lead roles of David Brent (The Office) and Andy Millman (Extras), both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with Merchant (Extras).
He created and directed the 2016 comedy film David Brent: Life on the Road, in which he also acted. In the late 1990s, Gervais began his stand-up career. He’s done five international stand-up comedy tours and is the author of the Flanimals children’s book series. The Ricky Gervais Show was conceived by Gervais, Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, and has spawned a number of spin-offs featuring Pilkington and produced by Gervais and Merchant. In addition to Ghost Town, Gervais has been in the films Night at the Museum, For Your Consideration, and Muppets Most Wanted. He wrote, directed, and starred in The Invention of Lying and Special Correspondents, both of which were released on Netflix. In 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, and 2020, he hosted the Golden Globe Awards. On the game show Child Support, Gervais also made an appearance. He also stars as Tony Johnson in the Netflix comedy series After Life, for which he is the creator, executive producer, director, and writer.
Net Worth
Ricky Gervais has a net worth of $140 million. The great majority of his fortune came from his work as the creator of the television show The Office. In 2001, the show debuted as a limited-run British series. It was converted into an American version in 2005, which ran for nine seasons and broadcast 201 episodes. The American version of The Office is one of the most profitable series in syndication history, with rights and fees totaling billions of dollars. As a result, when a deal is renewed or the show is sold to a new platform, Gervais continues to earn tens of millions of dollars.
Wife and Kids
Gervais splits his time between London’s Hampstead and Marlow, Buckinghamshire. He also has an apartment in New York City’s Barbizon 63 building. Since 1982, he has been in a relationship with producer and author Jane Fallon, but they have chosen not to marry. According to his beliefs, “there’s no point in us having a genuine ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God,” and they “didn’t like spending 16 years of [their] lives… and there are too many children.”
The Office
When Stephen Merchant was enrolled in a BBC production school, he was required to develop his own short film. He developed a docu-soap parody set in an office with the help of Ash Atalla, who was shown a 7-minute movie called ‘The Seedy Boss’ in August 1999. As a result, the character of David Brent was born. At the Edinburgh Fringe, Merchant handed this tape on to the BBC’s Head of Entertainment Paul Jackson, who subsequently passed it on to Head of Comedy Jon Plowman, who finally commissioned Merchant and Gervais to write a full pilot script. The Office’s first six episodes broadcast in the United Kingdom in July and August 2001, to little fanfare or interest.
Word-of-mouth, replays, and DVDs all helped to spread the word, generating excitement for the second series, which will also have six episodes. Gervais was dubbed the most powerful figure in TV comedy by Radio Times following the success of The Office’s second season. Gervais remarked in a 2015 BBC interview that the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, as well as Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, was his “portal to America.” Since then, The Office has been remade in Sweden, France, Germany, Quebec, Brazil, and the United States.
He is a vegan, an atheist, and a humanist who claims to have given up religion when he was eight years old. He defended his atheism in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in December 2010. He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society of the United Kingdom and a patron of Humanists UK, a British nonprofit that promotes the humanist viewpoint and works for a secular state and human rights. On September 3, 2019, he was honoured with the 2019 Richard Dawkins Award, which honours those who promote “secularism and rationality, upholding scientific truths wherever they may lead.”
Gervais won the award at the Troxy Theatre in London, which was hosted by the Center for Inquiry. Gervais is a “witty hero of atheism and reason,” according to Dawkins. Gervais is a UFC and Reading F.C. enthusiast. He enjoys music and has declared that David Bowie is his hero, with “Letter to Hermione” being his favourite tune. He has also mentioned that watching Iggy Pop perform live was his first exposure with live music. Following Reed’s death in 2013, he remarked that Lou Reed was “one of the finest artists of our time.” Gervais is one of 100 people who have contributed to the book Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You, which benefits NHS Charities Together and The Lullaby Trust.