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Biography
Mike Myers was born on the 25th of May,
1963, in the Scarborough district of Toronto, known to the snobbier
townsfolk as Scarberia - a cultural wasteland. His father, Eric, was
formerly a cook in the British Army, while his mother, Alice, known as
Bunny and formerly in the RAF, was an aspiring actress who'd attended
London's Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Both hailing from Liverpool, they married
in 1955 and emigrated to Canada the next year, producing three sons -
Paul (later in Toronto band The Gravelberrys), Peter and finally Mike,
all of them holding British passports. Learning the English language
from Eric and Bunny, Mike spoke with a Scouse accent until the age of 6.
Once in Canada, Bunny would give up on
the acting to raise her sons and work as a data processor. Eric,
meanwhile, would sell the Encyclopedia Britannica - Mike still wears the
ring he received for outstanding service. Throughout his early years,
Mike would be immersed in British culture. With his dad, he'd watch Bond
movies, The Saint and The Avengers. The folks from back home would send
over Beatles boots, clothes and even albums, making Mike the only kid in
Toronto to wear an olive-green Nehru jacket and support Liverpool FC.
And there was comedy, too. Eric prized humour above most things and
introduced young Mike to the Goons, to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau,
to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and to Monty Python. When Mike had
friends over to play table-hockey in the basement, Eric would actually
refuse entry to any child he considered to not be funny. Indeed, as he
grew older, Mike began to rely on Eric as a barometer for his own humour.
If dad laughed, it was good. He claims that, despite trying for years,
he didn't make "the house" laugh till he was 11. When he
finally managed it, it was one of the biggest moments of his life.
A cute kid, Mike was a natural for TV, and began work when aged 8,
appearing in many adverts, including spots for Pepsi and Kit-Kat (that
most British of chocolate bars). When he was 9, he appeared in an ad for
British Columbia Hydro. Playing his mother was Gilda Radner, star of
Saturday Night Live, soon to be one of America's most popular shows, and
one of Eric's favourites. Mike had a great time on the shoot, and wept
when it ended, causing his brothers to refer to him as Sucky Baby from
then on. Undeterred, Mike swore that one day he'd appear with Radner on
SNL. He would make the show, but sadly in the same year that Radner died
of cancer.
Attending Stephen Leacock High School, Mike was a fair student, but
always interested in entertainment. He took dance lessons and built a
series of comic characters, some of which he'd use in later years. At
parties, he'd try to make girls laugh by playing one fellow who'd bring
him monumental success - Wayne Campbell. He graduated in 1982 and,
though he'd applied for a place at Toronto's York University, won a
place with the Second City comedy troupe, which he seized upon. The good
news had arrived on the day of his final High School exam.
Second City was one of North America's
most prestigious comedy groups. It had been formed back in the early
Fifties, when a gang of Chicago students, including Mike Nichols and
Elaine May, had joined up with a group of townies, including Barbara
Harris, Ed Asner and Byrne and Joyce Piven (friends of John and Joan's
Cusack family), to form the Playwrights Theatre Club. This went through
several incarnations till, in 1959, it settled as Second City - its name
a joke concerning Chicago's supposed inferiority to New York.
In 1973, a new branch was opened in
Toronto, featuring both Dan Aykroyd and Mike's mate Gilda Radner but,
without a liquor licence, closed quickly. It re-opened, with a licence
and based in an old fire station, in early 1974, this time featuring
Radner, John Candy, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. By 1976, the team
were writing for TV, producing specials and their own show, called SCTV,
which satirised TV itself, and ran for 7 years. Onboard now was Rick
Moranis and, soon after, Martin Short.
With branches in Chicago, Toronto and Detroit, Second City became the
nation's premier breeding-ground for comic talent. Besides those
mentioned above, Alan Arkin was an alumnus, as were Joan Rivers, John
Belushi, Bill Murray, Chris Farley and the glorious George Wendt. And it
didn't simply give people a chance to perform, it was a serious training
centre, providing lessons and lectures in many forms of entertainment,
specialising in the encouragement of creative freedom, spontaneity and
improvisation being of prime importance.
So, this hot-bed of ingenuity was where Mike Myers received his first
formal training, and the screaming success of his predecessors and peers
must have given him high hopes for the future. But Second City was not
an immediate springboard for him because, drawn by the lure of the Old
Country, in the early Eighties he returned to dear old Blighty.
Here he teamed up with one Neil Mullarkey (later to partner Nick
Hancock, now of They Think It's All Over fame) as - yes, you've guessed
it - Mullarkey and Myers. Mullarkey, an ex-president of the Cambridge
Footlights club would perform sketches with Myers based on their shared
love of cartoons, B-movies and bad TV. They played around the burgeoning
London pub circuit, particularly at the George IV in Chiswick, where
they often shared the bill with the young Hugh Grant, then plying his
trade in the Jockeys Of Norfolk review.
As their fame increased, Mullarkey and Myers toured the UK, a jaunt that
ended in a sold-out season at the Edinburgh Festival. But eventually
Mike yearned for home and family and returned to Toronto. Later,
Mullarkey would briefly join him to revive the show in Canada. Later
still, he'd show up in Myers' Austin Powers debut, as the man who freaks
Austin out with his penis enlarger (he'd also add his thoughts to Mike's
So I Married An Axe Murderer, and pop up in Goldmember).
Before Mike left England, though, there
were a couple of other performances worthy of note. Reliving his
Beatles-packed past, he appeared as a Delivery Boy in Sandor Stern's
John And Yoko: A Love Story, which starred arch-Scouser Mark McGann. And
also, quite unbelievably when you think about it now, there was The Wide
Awake Club. This was a kids' show hosted by Tommy Boyd, Michaela
Strachan and the notorious Timmy Mallett, a loud man with garish shirts
and huge spectacles who'd batter small children with an enormous hammer
(Mallett's Mallet) if they didn't answer his questions quick enough.
Yes, for a while back there, Mike Myers was Timmy Mallett's underling.
Boggles the bonce, doesn't it?
Unsurprisingly, under the circumstances, Myers had to get the hell out
of Dodge and, by 1986, he was a paid-up member of Second City in
Toronto, building up his cast of characters, many of whom were British
or European. After two years, he moved on to the Chicago branch, and it
was here that he met his wife-to-be, the actress and screenwriter Robin
Ruzan. Well, he actually met her at a Blackhawks hockey game (Myers is a
major hockey fan, naming many of his movies' characters after hockey
players), when she was hit by a puck and he moved in to help.
This was excellent timing, because Mike's personal life was not in the
best of shapes. His father, Eric, was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease
and, much to Mike's dismay, was fading fast. No longer really knowing
who he was, Eric would not comprehend what happened next - his son's
breakthrough - a terrible shame as he'd have been the one who
appreciated it most.
What happened was this. Appearing at Second City Toronto's 15th
Anniversary gig in 1988, Mike's efforts were witnessed by guest Martin
Short. He alerted Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels and,
suddenly, Mike Myers was starring on one of America's most popular shows
(Ben
Stiller would also join the cast in 1989).
The next six years were extremely fruitful for Mike. Many of his
characters became wildly popular. With SNL-vet Dana Carvey as his trusty
buddy Garth, he played Wayne Campbell, gonzoid purveyor of
not-so-popular public access entertainment, and coiner of natty phrases
like "babeacilious!" (as said, Wayne was an old character,
having made his TV debut on Toronto's City Limits show back in the early
Eighties).
Then there was Coffee Talk host Linda
Richman, a Barbra Streisand obsessive Myers based on his own mother (he
actually once performed the act at a Streisand show). There was his
Scottish store owner, the store being All Things Scottish, with his
angry bark "If it's not Scots, it's crap!" And then there was
Dieter, pretentious German chat-show host and film critic, with his
monkey sidekick and out-there catch-phrases like "Your conversation
has become tiresome" and the infamous "Touch my monkey!"
Comedian Dana Andersen, who toured with
Mike back in his Second City days, would be quoted in Vanity Fair as
saying that he helped develop the Dieter character, way back when, even
coming up with the "Touch my monkey" line. Myers, it was said,
had never given him due credit.
To clear the air, Myers, at the peak of
his fame, would appear in Andersen's live improvised soap opera, Die
Nasty, in Toronto. The pair's friendship would be rekindled. There'd
also be further dispute when Carvey claimed to have created Dr Evil,
from Myers' Austin Powers, and to have based him on Lorne Michaels.
Myers denied it out-of-hand.
Now, a couple of years into his SNL stint, Myers was to experience a
series of shocks to the system. First, he was hired to write and star in
Wayne's World, a full-length feature based on his Wayne Campbell. Here,
he and Garth's public access TV show is snapped up by a local station
and fame beckons. Meanwhile, Wayne falls for rock chick Tia Carrere and
must fight off love rival Rob Lowe, a smarmy ad guy who's also
exploiting Wayne's show. "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll
hurl" screamed the posters, and they did, in their millions. Wayne
and Garth's in-car reaction to Bohemian Rhapsody became legend, as did
their meeting with Alice Cooper ("We're not worthy!"). The
movie was a surprise monster, the 6th biggest hit in the States in 1992.
Sadly, Eric wasn't there to see it. Alzheimer's had ensured he hadn't
recognised Mike on SNL. As his problems progressed, he'd poured himself
a scalding bath and spent a year in pain at a Toronto burns clinic. Now,
in 1991, a few days before the first Wayne's World preview, he died
(Mike would name his production company Eric's Boy in his memory). Mike
was hurt badly, saying that it was his dad who had taught him to have no
inhibitions, who had "allowed me to be the architect of my own
embarrassment". Mike's pain was worsened later, when one of his
brothers was killed in a car crash.
But there was no time to grieve. 1993 saw Myers married to Robin Ruzan,
and interview Madonna for Interview magazine. It also saw him write and
star in So I Married An Axe Murderer. Here, in dual roles, he played
both an outspoken (and madly Scottish) father constantly raging on about
government conspiracies and KFC, and his son, a poet terrified of
commitment who falls for sexy butcher Nancy Travis, then comes to
suspect she's a serial killer. The same year saw Wayne's World 2, where
the dynamic duo (plus the ghost of Jim Morrison) must organise the
Waynestock festival, Wayne fights Christopher Walken for Carrere's
attention, and Garth picks up Kim Basinger.
What should have been a period of unadulterated joy was far from it. The
deaths in the family were tough to bear. SNL and the movies had taxed
him, too, despite winning an Emmy nomination for his SNL work. Depressed
and suffering writer's block, he took a year and a half off, going into
seclusion with Robin, his model soldiers and his three dogs (each named
after hockey players).
It was now that Myers greatest creation
came to him. Thinking about his dad, he recalled watching the Pink
Panther with him, and Matt Helm movies, and James Bond. Suddenly, a new
character popped into his head. Groovy fashion photographer by day,
super-spy by night, it was Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery,
cryo-frozen in the Sixties, then thawed out in the Nineties to combat
the threat of his old adversary, Dr Evil. A film formed in his head and
he got it made. He drew on all his past experiences. There were big
dance numbers, millions of smutty innuendoes, catchy catch-phrases, hot
babes, and filmic references to Bond, and The Beatles' A Hard Day's
Night, as well as Our Man Flint and Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.
Austin Powers 1, written to celebrate his father's life, was not a big
hit at the box-office. But the video went through the roof. Now it was a
franchise. Introducing new characters, like Dr Evil's tiny clone Mini-Me
(inspired by Marlon Brando and his weeny lookalike in The Island Of Dr
Moreau), the repulsive Scottish blubber-gut, Fat Bastard (that's SO
British), and ever-hotter babes like Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham)
and Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyonce
Knowles), Myers would stretch Austin's adventures over three
episodes. Each of them were massive hits, as reflected by Myers' pay. He
took $3 million for Powers 1, $7 million for Austin Powers: The Spy Who
Shagged Me, and $25 million for Goldmember - or 21% of the gross,
whichever turned out to be bigger.
Austin Powers would take up much of Myers' time as we entered the new
millennium. But there were some other projects worth noting. There was
his first "straight" role, in 54, when he played Steve Rubell,
the extravagant, coke-fuelled boss of Studio 54, the decadent New York
nightclub of the Seventies. Then there was Pete's Meteor, where a
working-class Dublin kid discovers a meteor in the garden then gets
mucked about by a university geologist.
Mike played a friend of the kid's sister,
who's blamed by the family when the girl dies. Once more, his accent was
good, and he fitted in well next to the Irish likes of Dervla Kirwan and
Brenda Fricker, who'd earlier played his mother in So I Married An Axe
Murderer. It was a charming movie, foolishly overlooked by most.
After this came The Thin Pink Line, a Best In Show-style mockumentary
featuring a closeted gay and a host of quirky types, played by Jennifer
Aniston, David Schwimmer, and Illeanna Douglas, amongst others. Then
there was a brief role alongside Ben
Stiller and Janeane Garofolo in the twisting, dark comedy Nobody
Knows Anything (this would not be released till 2003). And then another
in Mystery, Alaska, where sheriff Russell
Crowe and judge Burt Reynolds face comic conflict when a small
town's hockey team must get in shape to face the New York Rangers.
Directing was Austin Powers helmsman Jay Roach.
But into every megastar's life a lot of
rain must fall. Following the success of Wayne's World, Myers struck a
deal with Universal and Imagine Entertainment (headed by Ron Howard and
Brian Grazer) to make a movie to be called Sprockets and based around
Dieter. Myers wrote a script, pre-production began, but Mike didn't like
his script and pulled out. In 2000, Universal sued him for $3.8 million,
with Imagine lodging a suit for $30 million in lost profits, basing
their figure on sums made by Austin Powers.
Myers hit back with a $20 million suit,
alleging they'd violated his privacy, defamed him and set a writ-server
on him who'd stalked him and Robin "in a threatening manner down
dark, winding and unlit streets". He even hired private detective
Anthony Pelicano to help him out, and said he was justified in walking
away, rather than "cheating moviegoers with an unacceptable
script". After all, he was also walking away from a $20 million
paycheck.
Eventually, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks
stepped in to help settle the dispute. Dieter would be forgotten, but
Mike would star in another movie for Universal and Imagine, with
Dreamworks taking a cut, too. Such a collaboration would take place in
2003, when Mike starred as Dr Seuss's Cat In The Hat.
There would be yet more trouble in 2002, upon the release of Goldmember.
MGM and Danjaq (who control the James Bond licence) had attempted to
have the title of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me changed on the
grounds that it was trading on the Bond franchise without permission.
They'd failed that time, but succeeded when they said the same of
Goldmember (Fat Bastard dipped in gold? That couldn't be right). 11,000
trailers for the movie and many thousands of posters were recalled but,
by April, the matter was sorted out.
Myers and New Line could use Goldmember
as a title, but MGM must approve any further parodying of Bond titles.
And New Line, who usually only showed their own trailers before their
films, had to trail the next Bond flick, Die Another Day, before
Goldmember AND The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.
New Line wouldn't have cared much. The Spy Who Shagged Me had made $310
million worldwide, by far their biggest hit, so Goldmember would surely
be golden indeed. Plus, they'd already registered such titles as Live
And Let Shag, Never Say Member Again, You Only Shag Thrice and Licence
To Shag. But MGM would be watching closely, particularly as Myers had
already annoyed them by pulling out of their Inspector Clouseau remake.
Before The Cat In The Hat would come A View From The Top, where Gwyneth
Paltrow played a small-town girl who wants to be a flight attendant and
has to attend a training boot camp headed by Mike's John Whitney, a
fellow insanely bitter that his defective eye means that he cannot take
to the skies himself. He played the role brilliantly, like all great
clowns managing to mix slapstick and poignancy. Trouble was, the film
had to be delayed following the September 11th attacks and one of Mike's
funniest scenes, where he showed his students how to behave should a
terrorist make it onboard, was cut altogether. When the movie was
finally released, two years after its completion, it (ahem) took a
nosedive.
But The Cat In The Hat would make up for
any bad feeling. The premise was simple. Mother of two Kelly Preston is
holding a reception and desperately needs it to be a success. With her
boss being a major cleanliness freak, she needs the house to be
spotless.
Enter Myers, as Dr Seuss's most anarchic
creation, and cue destruction of the most hilarious order. Some
complained that the movie, making the Cat loveable, maxing the SFX and
adding a few risque moments, was not entirely true to the books. But,
like The Grinch before it, it was overflowing with chaotic energy and,
also like The Grinch, was a massive hit.
Another would come with Shrek 2, Mike
reprising the role he played in the enormously successful 2001 outing.
There, stepping in when his former SNL cohort Chris Farley died, he
provided the voice of the reclusive ogre on a quest to save the
beautiful princess from a midget tyrant, all the while "aided"
by Eddie
Murphy's loudmouthed donkey. In Shrek's final love scene, Mike had
read opposite his wife, Robin, rather than princess Cameron
Diaz.
Now at the very top of the comedy tree, Mike Myers will surely bring
sex-crazed agent Austin Powers back into action once more. And he'll
surely invent new ways to embarrass himself and entertain us. Eric would
certainly have demanded it. ~ Dominic Wills
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