Picture Arts and Sciences in the Actors Branch since 2008. Early life Sacha Noam Baron Cohen was born into a Jewish family in the Hammersmith area of London on 13 October 1971. His mother, photographer Daniella (née Weiser), was born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1939. His father, editor-turned-clothing store owner Gerald Jerry Baron Cohen (1932–2016), was born into a Belarusian family of Ashkenazi Jews in London and grew up in the Welsh town of Pontypridd. Baron Cohen's paternal grandfather, Morris Moses Cohen, added "Baron" to his surname. His maternal grandmother, Liesel (née Levi), lived in Haifa and trained as a ballet dancer in Germany before fleeing the Nazis in 1936. He has two older brothers: Erran, a composer with whom he often collaborates, and Amnon. His cousins include autism researcher Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, playwright Dan Baron Cohen, and filmmaker Ash Baron-Cohen. Baron Cohen was first educated at the independent Catholic St Columba's College in St Albans, before moving on to attend the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree. He then studied History with a focus on antisemitism at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1993 with upper-second-class honours. As an undergraduate, he wrote his thesis on the role of Jewish activists in the American civil rights movement. He was a member of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, where he performed in shows such as Fiddler on the Roof and Cyrano de Bergerac, as acted in shows with the Labour Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror. He played the cello while growing up, and made his original television debut as a cellist on Fanfare for Young Musicians. Career Early roles Baron Cohen grew up as a fan of Monty Python and Peter Cook, but his greatest comedic influence was Peter Sellers, whom he saw as "this incredibly realistic actor, who was also hilarious and who managed to bridge the gap between comedy and satire". Known for portraying a wide range of comic characters using different accents and guises, Sellers was referred to by Baron Cohen as "the most seminal force in shaping [his] early ideas on comedy". After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked for a time as a fashion model. By the early 1990s, he was hosting a weekly programme on Windsor cable television's local broadcasts with Carol Kirkwood, who later became a BBC weather forecaster. In 1995, Channel 4 was planning a replacement for its series The Word, and