Billy Connolly - Biography

Known in his homeland as "The Big Yin," Billy Connolly started out as a folk singer and was half of the duo The Humblebums alongside Gerry Rafferty in the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, Connolly had launched a solo career that featured him performing comedic folk songs, often at clubs and police associations in Scotland. Connolly would introduce each song with long, rambling comic monologues often based upon his life growing up in Scotland, though his best-known performance was a comic retelling of the Crucifixion story. By the late 1970s the standup comedy and music were given equal weight in his live shows and albums, and by the 1980s he pretty much dropped the musical part of his act to focus on comedy, though he continued to record the occasional musical work.

From the late 1980s onward, Connolly launched a second career as an actor, appearing in a variety of comedic and serious roles, including landing a role on the US sitcom Head of the Class which led to a short-lived spin-off, Billy, both of which forced Connolly to shave his iconic beard for a time. His most acclaimed dramatic film work was co-starring with Dame Judi Dench in the Oscar-nominated Mrs. Brown. In the 2000s, Connolly added "travel documentarian" to his resume, hosting a series of shows featuring him exploring far-reaching points of the globe.

Connolly continues to perform on stage and act on film, although in 2013 it was announced that he is fighting the early stages of Parkinson's disease.

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