Ricky Gervais Tickets

About Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais was born on June 25, 1961, in Reading, Berkshire, the youngest of four children in a working-class family. He studied philosophy at University College London between 1980 and 1983, where he met his long-term partner, the writer and producer Jane Fallon. His first attempt at a creative career was in music: he fronted the new-wave duo Seona Dancing in the early ’80s, and later worked as a manager for the band Suede before the project went on to success without him. He found his way into comedy in the mid-1990s, cutting his teeth at XFM radio before a sharp-witted turn on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show (1998–2000) marked him out as a distinctive voice.

His breakthrough came with The Office (2001–2003), the BBC mockumentary he co-created and co-wrote with Stephen Merchant, starring as the excruciating, self-regarding manager David Brent. It was a slow burn — critics and audiences took a little time to catch on — but word of mouth and DVD sales turned it into a cultural phenomenon, spawning an American adaptation and winning Gervais a Golden Globe in 2004. He followed it with Extras (2005–2007), in which he played a jobbing film extra surrounded by a parade of celebrities sending themselves up, earning him a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

The years since have shown real range: Life’s Too Short (2011–2013) with Merchant and Warwick Davis, the quietly moving Derek (2012–2014) set in a retirement home, and then After Life (2019–2022), his Netflix series about a grieving widower, which revealed a more dramatic, melancholic side to his comedy and became one of the platform’s most-watched British shows. An animated series, Alley Cats, is in development for 2026.

Stand-up has run alongside all of it, from Animals (2003) and Politics (2004) through Fame, Science, Humanity, and SuperNature, to Armageddon (2023) — a single Hollywood Bowl show from that tour reportedly grossed £1.41 million, the highest-grossing one-off gig by a British comedian — and his most recent tour, Mortality (2025). He now returns to arenas and theatres with Legend, which he’s joked he’s named “just in case it’s my last stand-up show.”

Beyond stand-up and sitcoms, Gervais has had a steady film career — the Night at the Museum trilogy, Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying (which he also co-wrote and co-directed), Cemetery Junction, and Muppets Most Wanted among them — plus voice work and a mockumentary continuation of The Office’s David Brent in 2016’s David Brent: Life on the Road. With Merchant and Karl Pilkington he created The Ricky Gervais Show, which became the world’s most-downloaded podcast and spun off an HBO animated series and An Idiot Abroad.

He’s perhaps just as well known for hosting the Golden Globes five times (2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, and 2020), the first host in decades to return for multiple ceremonies, with a roast-style delivery that made the job genuinely controversial. Across his career he’s picked up five Golden Globes, two Primetime Emmys, seven British Academy Television Awards, and two Rose d’Or awards, and in May 2025 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.