Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He was also a film producer and script writer, a star of London’s West End musical theatre, a writer, and a landscape painter.
Humphries neglected his law studies at University in favour of performing at reviews, out of which he evolved his character Edna Everage in May 1955, an average lower middle-class housewife. In 1959 he went to England for a stage production but returned three years later with his own production of Edna in A Nice Night’s Entertainment.
In 1974, Edna was made a Dame by the P.M. in the film Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, after which she had a personality change, becoming Dame Edna, “the brightest star of the Universe.”
On 26 October 1982, Humphries was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. In 2007 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for “services to entertainment” (Queen’s Birthday Honours, UK List).
In 1993 he won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography for More, Please. In 2000 he received a Special Tony Award for a live theatrical event at the 55th Annual Tony Awards for Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.
Humphries married four times. He had two daughters, Tessa and Emily, and two sons, Oscar and Rupert, from his second and third marriages.
Humphries suffered a fall in February 2023 and was battling a rare form of pre-invasive skin cancer. He died following complications from hip surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney on 22 April 2023 at 7 PM, aged 89.
Link to Wikipedia biography