"Funniest Comedian JEREMY PIVEN vs NIGEL PLANER"

JEREMY PIVEN

Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He is best known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series...

Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He is best known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmy Awards. He also starred in the British period drama Mr Selfridge, which tells the story of the man who created the English department store Selfridges, and portrayed Spence Kovak on Ellen DeGeneres's sitcom Ellen. Piven was born in Manhattan and raised in a Reconstructionist Jewish family of Ukrainian Jewish descent. His parents are Byrne Piven (1929–2002) and Joyce Hiller Piven (née Goldstein), both of whom were actors and drama teachers. His sister is director Shira Piven, whom he has described as one of his first acting teachers; his brother-in-law is director Adam McKay. He grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and graduated from Evanston Township High School. As a teenager, he attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where he played Bernardo in West Side Story. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he departed after his sophomore year to attend New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He left Tisch during his senior year to pursue his acting career and is an alumnus of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop (as are Cusack's sisters Joan and Ann). Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school.

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NIGEL PLANER

Nigel George Planer (born 22 February 1953) is a British actor, comedian, novelist and playwright who played Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones and...

Nigel George Planer (born 22 February 1953) is a British actor, comedian, novelist and playwright who played Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones and Ralph Filthy in Filthy Rich & Catflap. He has appeared in many West End musicals, including original casts of Evita, Chicago, We Will Rock You, Wicked, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has also appeared in Hairspray. He won a BRIT award in 1984 and has been nominated for Olivier, TMA, WhatsOnStage and BAFTA awards. Planer's father’s Hungarian-Romanian family left Nazi Germany in 1933 and settled in Mortlake, London. He established a medical equipment company, which pioneered technology in controlled-rate freezers, IVF and stem cells. Nigel Planer, who has two brothers, was born in London. He studied at the University of Sussex before leaving to become an actor. He studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. A founding member of the London Comedy Store and original member of The Comic Strip – pioneers of the alternative comedy movement in the United Kingdom. Planer appeared with Peter Richardson as part of the double act "The Outer Limits". Planer and Richardson also wrote the That's Life! parody on Not the Nine O'Clock News. Over the next 20 years he went on to star in film, theatre and television. With Christopher Douglas, he created the spoof actor character "Nicholas Craig", who appears in book, radio, TV and articles as well as live; most recently at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in Stewart Lee's At Last the 1984 show. Planer is also the author of several books, plays, radio plays, and TV scripts as well as a small volume of poetry. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Edinburgh Napier University in June 2011.

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