Educated first at Camberwell Grammar School, Humphries was awarded a place in the school's gallery of achievement.

In 2000 Humphries took his Dame Edna: The Royal Tour show to North America winning the inaugural Special Tony Award for a Live Theatrical Event in 2000 and won two National Broadway Theatre Awards for "Best Play" and for "Best Actor" in 2001. Barry Humphries obituary: Entertainer's outrageous caricatures Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson took the one-man show to new heights". His early home life set the pattern for his eventual stage career; his father in particular spent little time with him and Humphries spent hours playing at dressing-up in the back garden. Nostalgic, the book reveals much about a man who has kept his private life private, overshadowed by, among others, his most monstrous creation, Dame Edna Everage. In the UK he made two highly successful series of his comedy talk show The Dame Edna Experience for London Weekend Television.Humphries enjoyed avant-garde music and was a patron of, among others, the French composer Jean-Michel Damase and the Melba Foundation in Australia. Humphries later summed up his negative reception by saying: "When The New York Times tells you to close, you close. Humphries died following complications from hip surgery at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 22 April 2023.

Bazza Comes into His Own: The Final Fescennine Farago of Barry McKenzie, Australia's first working-class hero—with learned and scholarly appendices and a new enlarged glossary.Arts blog Critter Away referred to Humphries' characters as being "still fresh" and "a testament to laugh-out-loud satire". In May 2013, Australia's ABC Network announced that Humphries would be joining the cast of Australian telemovie series, Jack Irish, playing a high-profile judge in the third movie in the series. Although he eventually gained worldwide popularity, he encountered stiff resistance in the early years of his career: his first London one-man show, A Nice Night's Entertainment (1962), received scathing reviews. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Humphries performed at Cook's comedy venue The Establishment, where he became a friend of and was photographed by leading photographer Lewis Morley, whose studio was located above the club.

However, in his teens Humphries began to rebel against the strictures of conventional suburban life by becoming "artistic", much to the dismay of his parents who, despite their affluence, distrusted "art".

It was thrilling to work on this film and when you see my extraordinary interpretation you realise why I immediately fell into the arms of Jenny Craig, and minor cosmetic surgery. He finally broke through to widespread critical and audience acclaim in Britain with his 1976 London production Housewife, Superstar!

Humphries was the author of many books, including two autobiographies, two novels and a treatise on Chinese drama in the goldfields. The Adventures of Barry McKenzie starred singer Barry Crocker in the title role and featured Humphries—who co-wrote the script with Beresford—playing three different parts. Barry Humphries, sometimes known as Dame Edna Everage, is the author of several books and many plays.Humphries responded by becoming a voracious reader, a collector of rare books, a painter, a theatre fan and a surrealist. Humphries was born on 17 February 1934 in the suburb of Kew in Melbourne, Victoria, [1] the son of Eric Humphries (né John Albert Eric Humphries) (1905–1972), a construction manager, and his wife Louisa Agnes (née Brown) (1907–1984). He became a friend of leading members of the British comedy scene including Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, Spike Milligan, Willie Rushton and fellow Australian expatriate comedian-actors John Bluthal and Dick Bentley. Other exhibits the group mounted include "Creche Bang", a pram covered in meat and "Eye and Spoon Race", a spoon with a sheep's eye.