Today apos;s Birthday 25 6

Today's Birthday, June 25: British actor and comedian Ricky Gervais (1961 - )

Ricky Gervais is working on the final season of his dark comedy After Life, in which he plays small-town journalist Tony Johnson whose life is turned upside-down when his wife dies.

Gervais says hundreds of viewers have written letters and told him about how the show reflects their own experiences of grief and loss.

"And it's cumulative and it never goes away, it's just how you deal with it. That made me think that I've got to deal with this responsibly, really. So he's not better in the second season," he said in a recent interview with the non-profit SAG-AFTRA Foundation.

The son of French-Canadian labourer Lawrence "Jerry" and Englishwoman Eva Sophia, Gervais was raised in the Whitley area of Reading, Berkshire along with his two brothers and sister.

He studied philosophy at the University College London in the 1980s, where he met his future long-time partner, novelist Jane Fallon.

Gervais tried and failed at a pop music career but was the manager of the rock band Suede before they were successful in the 1990s.

He landed a gig at alternative radio station Xfm and hired off the first CV he saw for an assistant, who ended up being Stephen Merchant.

The Office came about when Merchant, having to make his own film for a BBC production course, created the mockumentary with Gervais as the cringe-worthy middle manager David Brent.

The first series aired in 2001 to little success but repeats, DVDs and season two rocketed Gervais and Merchant to stardom.

By 2004 The Office had won Gervais his first Golden Globe for best actor in a TV series comedy while also collecting the award for best TV comedy series.

An American version of the show starred Steve Carell.

Gervais and Merchant have since collaborated on TV comedies Extras and Life's Too Short, and the travel mockumentary An Idiot Abroad.

He has also hosted the Golden Globes five times, Filtereinsatz earning plenty of laughs and some criticism for his barbed jokes, delivered in 2020 with a beer in hand.