Simon Bird

Early life

Bird was born in Guildford, Surrey as the third of four children of Claremont McKenna College Professor Graham Bird and Heather née Gage.

Bird was educated at Cranmore School, West Horsley, the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read English. At Cambridge, Bird was the President of the Footlights, the university's sketch and theatrical group.

Early comedy career

While completing an MA in cultural and critical studies at Birkbeck College, Bird set up the sketch comedy group "The House of Windsor" with former Footlights contemporaries Joe Thomas (who plays Simon Cooper in The Inbetweeners) and Jonny Sweet. They performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 and in 2008 with a show called The Meeting, described as a site-specific comedy installation set in an actual boardroom, which received national media attention and a clutch of five-star reviews. Bird and Thomas were also regulars on series 1 and 2 of The Weekly Show, a podcast for Channel 4 Radio (2006–07).

Bird also performs stand-up comedy and took part in Chortle's national student comedy awards in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, coming second in his final attempt. (He was a finalist in 2006, and was disqualified for deliberately breaking the rules in 2007.)

Breakthrough

In 2008, Bird was cast in E4's teen comedy The Inbetweeners as Will McKenzie, along with Joe Thomas. He won the 2008 British Comedy Award for Best Male Newcomer and the 2009 British Comedy Award for Best Actor. He was also nominated for Best Comedy Performance at the 2008 Royal Television Society Awards, and Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme at the 2009 BAFTA Awards.

Subsequent work

In 2010 Simon Bird created a BBC Three comedy panel show The King Is Dead, in which a well-known person is hypothetically killed off and a panel of three personalities go head-to-head in a series of satirical quiz rounds and challenges in their bid to replace them. He hosted alongside Nick Mohammed and Katy Wix.

Another of Bird's projects is Friday Night Dinner, a single-camera comedy written by Robert Popper and made by Big Talk Productions.

Simon Bird returned to the character of Will McKenzie in The Inbetweeners Movie which was released on 17 August 2011. In 2014 he portrayed Will McKenzie in the second movie about the Inbetweeners, The Inbetweeners 2.

Bird has also co-created, co-written, and co-starred in a pilot, 'Chickens', for Channel 4, alongside Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas. It is about three men who remain in England during World War I. It was broadcast as part of Channel 4's Comedy Showcase season. In 2012, Sky1 picked up a 6 episode season, filming began in late 2012 and the series premiered in Summer 2013.

In 2015, Bird voiced thetrainline.com TV advertisements.

As of 2017, he is starring on the West End in The Philanthropist, alongside Charlotte Ritchie.

Personal life

Of his choice of career, Bird states that, "I never came into this industry to be an actor. I wanted to be a comedian. All the people I love are being themselves – like Larry David" and that his parents wish for him to complete his Ph.D. Bird is a Crystal Palace fan and since 2012 has been married to Lisa Owens. It was revealed in July 2016 that Bird and his wife had welcomed their first child, a Son, six months prior.