Lee John Martin Evans (born 25 February 1964) is a British film and television actor, musician, singer, and writer and a retired stand-up comedian. He co-founded the production company Little Mo Films with Addison Cresswell, who was also his agent prior to Cresswell's death in December 2013. Evans became one of the United Kingdom's most popular stand-up comedians, with his Roadrunner tour grossing £12.9 million. He made his cinema debut with the Jerry Lewis comedy Funny Bones (1995), earning the Paris Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and went on to appear in the Hollywood films The Fifth Element (1997), Mouse Hunt (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), The Ladies Man (2000), and The Medallion (2003). He lent his voice to Zippo the Troodon in the Emmy-nominated miniseries Dinotopia (2002) and made a notable departure from comedy with a leading role in the Irish thriller film Freeze Frame (2004). In 2008, the DVD of Evans' Big – Live at the O2 show became the highest-selling Christmas DVD in the United Kingdom, only to be surpassed by his own Monsters Tour DVD in 2014. In November 2014, he announced his retirement from stand-up comedy. In 2017, he briefly came out of retirement to star in a run of William Shakespeare and Harold Pinter plays. Early life Lee John Martin Evans was born in the Avonmouth suburb of Bristol on 25 February 1964, the son of Irish mother Shirley Hunt and Welsh father Dave Evans (died June 2019). He has an older brother, Wayne (born 1962). His father was a comedian, musician, and impressionist. The family left Bristol in 1975, moving to Essex, where Evans attended The Billericay School. After a spell as a boxer and two years at Thurrock Art College in Essex, he followed his father into entertainment. During his teenage years, he moved to Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where he was a drummer in a punk rock band called The Anonymous Five. Career Stand-up comedy Evans rose to fame during the 1990s with abrasive, exciting, sweaty, energetic stage performances, and physical observational comedy. His slapstick humour has led to comparisons with Norman Wisdom, though Evans does not regard Wisdom as an influence. In 1993, he won the Perrier Comedy Award for his work at the Edinburgh Festival. Evans's sweat drenches him on stage. During most of his headlining performances, he often takes an intermission, during which he has a quick