Michael Palin
Michael Palin is a British actor, comedian, writer, screenwriter, and travel writer born in Ranmoor on 5 May 1943.
Palin was educated at Birkdale School and then Shrewsbury School before going on to study at Brasenose College, Oxford. These years provided the academic and social formation that preceded his entry into professional performance and writing. He subsequently built a career that extended across film, television, and the page, working as a television writer, screenwriter, film actor, television actor, voice actor, and children's writer in addition to his better-documented roles.
Among the honours he has received, Palin was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services. He also received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, demonstrating his standing as a performing artist distinct from his written work. The European Film Academy presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award, acknowledging the breadth of a career that spanned multiple creative disciplines. The BAFTA Fellowship, the highest honour the British Academy of Film and Television Arts confers, was also awarded to him, placing him among a small number of figures to have received that distinction.
Throughout his career, Palin worked consistently across several overlapping modes of creative production: performing in comedic and dramatic capacities on film and television, contributing to screenplays, writing for younger readers, and producing travel writing in the English language. The range of his output — from children's literature to screen performance to travel prose — marks his body of work as one that moved between genres rather than settling within a single form. The European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award and the BAFTA Fellowship together stand as the formal capstones of a career conducted across acting, comedy, writing, and travel literature.
Quotes by Michael Palin
I’d got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me.
Please don’t ask which I enjoy more – acting or hosting – because I love them equally.
I’ve been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I’ve often had a guide who’s been able to show me things that you wouldn’t see with a tour group.
I remember queuing around the block in Sheffield when I was growing up. At that time, going to the cinema was really something special – there was something about the style of the real thing that is immeasurable nicer than multiplexes.
Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling – I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window.
George Harrison’s passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.
I don’t see why it should be remarkable that you can acquire a reputation for fairness and decency. Those are qualities shared by so many people. And the great majority of people I meet are decent people, just trying to navigate their way through the world without causing too much trouble.
I’m aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That’s just the way life is.
From my travels around the world I have seen how much damage and pollution is done by the careless disposal of waste. It is also evident that we in the West produce far more and throw away far more than the developing world, almost without thinking.
I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women’s clothing and hang around in bars.