Sacha Baron Cohen may not have been as prolific as some of the people on this list, and off it for that matter, but for pure originality and talent he is right up there with the best. He made his name for creating the brilliant Ali G, a middle-class, suburban British white male who likes to think he's a gangster, and the success of Da Ali G Show spawned the movie Ali G Indahouse in 2002. It was four years later that Cohen would reach superstardom, however, with a truly inspired comic creation. The 2006 comedy classic Borat, surely one of the funniest films of the last 20 years, is a work of genius, and Cohen's performance as Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakhstan TV personality who heads to American to make a documentary, is hysterical. He interviews people from various walks of life, who unwittingly believe Borat is a real person. The national anthem, dinner party and kidnapping of Pamela Anderson are real high points, and it is laugh-a-minute stuff. Although not as funny as Borat, Cohen's follow-up Bruno, in which he plays a gay 19-year-old Austrian fashion journalist, at the very least shows the Englishman's versatility. Cohen has regularly popped up in cameo roles in the five years since then, including Anchorman 2 and Les Miserables, and he is currently working on Grimsby, in which he plays an idiotic football hooligan. As mentioned, the 43-year-old may not have been in a huge amount, but in his case, it has been very much a case of quality over quantity (forgetting The Dictator, of course).
