John Barry Humphries (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian actor, artist, author, comedian, and satirist. His is probably best known for making up and playing the characters of Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, who is an really rude "Australian diplomat". He is also a movie producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer and a landscape painter. He has been on TV, in movie and on stage. He became popular in Australia in the 1950s, then Britain from the 1960s and finally in America in the 1990s. He has been called the most important comedian since Charlie Chaplin.