Louis Theroux
Encyclopedia
Louis Sebastian Theroux (θəˈruː ; born 20 May 1970) is an English broadcaster
best known for his Gonzo style journalism on the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux
and brother Marcel Theroux
. He currently works with BBC producing his documentaries and popular TV series.
. His mother, Anne Castle, was Paul's first British wife. His elder brother is the writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux
. He is the cousin of American actor Justin Theroux. He moved to the UK when he was four, and was brought up in London.
Theroux was educated for a couple of years at Allfarthing school then moved to Westminster School
(where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton
and Joe Cornish
). Another of his contemporaries was Liberal Democrat
politician, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
with whom he travelled to America. He then went to Magdalen College, Oxford
where he gained a first class degree in modern history and was noted for his film reviews for the Grapevine magazine.
His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative free weekly newspaper in San Jose, California
. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy
magazine. He was also working as a correspondent on Michael Moore
's TV Nation
series, for which he provided segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon
ladies in the Amazon
, the Jerusalem syndrome
, and the attempts by the Ku Klux Klan
to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC
, out of which came Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
. He has guest-written for a number of publications including Hip-Hop Connection and he continues to write for The Idler
.
(1998–2000), Theroux followed marginal, mostly American subcultures like survivalists
, Black nationalists
, White supremacists
and porn stars
, often by living among or close to the people involved. Often, his documentary method subtly exposed the contradictions or farcical elements of some seriously held beliefs. Theroux himself describes the aim of the series as
Despite much call for a complete DVD set of Weird Weekends only selected episodes have ever been available for purchase.
(2000–02), Theroux accompanied a different British celebrity
in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did so. His episode about the DJ
and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile
When Louis Met Jimmy was voted one of the top fifty documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain's Channel 4
. In When Louis Met the Hamiltons, the disgraced Tory
MP Neil Hamilton
and his wife Christine
were arrested following false allegations of indecent assault during the course of filming. In When Louis Met Max Clifford, Max Clifford
tried to set Louis up. However, it backfired when Max Clifford was caught lying, as the crew was still recording his live microphone during a conversation. After this celebrity series concluded, a retrospective was aired, called Life with Louis. He was meant to do a similar programme with Michael Jackson
before Martin Bashir
completed his documentary for ITV, but it was cancelled.
Selected episodes of When Louis Met... were included as bonus content on a Best-Of collection of Weird Weekends. The entire series has never been released on DVD.
Subjects for the specials include criminal gangs in Lagos, Neo-Nazis in America, ultra-Zionists in Israel and child psychiatry. A 2007 special, The Most Hated Family in America
, received strong critical praise from the international media.
with his partner, Nancy Strang, a TV director, and his two sons.
:
British Academy Television Awards 2001
:
2002 Royal Television Society
:
British Academy Television Awards 2002
:
Journalists John Safran
and Harmon Leon cite him as an "important influence".
Presenter
A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
best known for his Gonzo style journalism on the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses into the worlds of individuals and groups that they would not normally come into contact with or experience up close...
and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux
Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...
and brother Marcel Theroux
Marcel Theroux
Marcel Raymond Theroux is a British novelist and broadcaster. He wrote The Stranger in The Earth and The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: a paper chase for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2002. His third novel, A Blow to the Heart, was published by Faber in 2006. His fourth, Far North was...
. He currently works with BBC producing his documentaries and popular TV series.
Early life and career
Theroux is the youngest son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul TherouxPaul Theroux
Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...
. His mother, Anne Castle, was Paul's first British wife. His elder brother is the writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux
Marcel Theroux
Marcel Raymond Theroux is a British novelist and broadcaster. He wrote The Stranger in The Earth and The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: a paper chase for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2002. His third novel, A Blow to the Heart, was published by Faber in 2006. His fourth, Far North was...
. He is the cousin of American actor Justin Theroux. He moved to the UK when he was four, and was brought up in London.
Theroux was educated for a couple of years at Allfarthing school then moved to Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
(where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton
Adam Buxton
Adam Offord Buxton is an English comedian and actor. With Joe Cornish, he forms one half of the duo Adam and Joe. The pair presented Adam and Joe on BBC 6 Music, whilst Buxton also presents his own show on 6 Music on Sundays, called Adam Buxton's Big Mix Tape, currently on hiatus.-Major work:His...
and Joe Cornish
Joe Cornish (comedian)
Joseph Murray "Joe" Cornish is an English comedian, television and radio presenter, director, writer and actor, who along with his long-time comedy partner, Adam Buxton, form the comedy duo Adam and Joe....
). Another of his contemporaries was Liberal Democrat
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
politician, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
Nick Clegg
Nicholas William Peter "Nick" Clegg is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council and Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform in the coalition government of which David Cameron is the Prime Minister...
with whom he travelled to America. He then went to Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
where he gained a first class degree in modern history and was noted for his film reviews for the Grapevine magazine.
His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative free weekly newspaper in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy
Spy (magazine)
Spy was a satirical monthly magazine founded in 1986 by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., its first publisher. After one folding and a rebirth, it ceased publication in 1998...
magazine. He was also working as a correspondent on Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
's TV Nation
TV Nation
Production on the pilot episode of TV Nation began in January 1993. Moore initially turned to friends and colleagues in many production areas, while also making a point to ensure the show's employees were unionized. For the show's title sequence, graphic designer Chris Harvey put together the...
series, for which he provided segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon
Avon Products
Avon Products, Inc. is a US cosmetics, perfume and toy seller with markets in over 140 countries across the world and sales of $9.9 billion worldwide as of 2007.-Business Model:...
ladies in the Amazon
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
, the Jerusalem syndrome
Jerusalem syndrome
The Jerusalem syndrome is a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem...
, and the attempts by the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, out of which came Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses into the worlds of individuals and groups that they would not normally come into contact with or experience up close...
. He has guest-written for a number of publications including Hip-Hop Connection and he continues to write for The Idler
The Idler (1993)
The Idler is a yearly British magazine devoted to its ethos of 'idling'. Founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the publication's intention is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject.The magazine combines the...
.
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
In Weird WeekendsLouis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses into the worlds of individuals and groups that they would not normally come into contact with or experience up close...
(1998–2000), Theroux followed marginal, mostly American subcultures like survivalists
Survivalism
Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order...
, Black nationalists
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
, White supremacists
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
and porn stars
Pornographic actor
A pornographic actor/actress or a porn star is a person who appears in pornographic film. Most actors appear nude in films...
, often by living among or close to the people involved. Often, his documentary method subtly exposed the contradictions or farcical elements of some seriously held beliefs. Theroux himself describes the aim of the series as
Despite much call for a complete DVD set of Weird Weekends only selected episodes have ever been available for purchase.
When Louis Met...
In When Louis Met…When Louis Met…
When Louis Met... is a series of documentary films made by BAFTA award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux. The series was originally aired on BBC2 from 2000 to 2002....
(2000–02), Theroux accompanied a different British celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did so. His episode about the DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile
Jimmy Savile
Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile, OBE, KCSG was an English disc jockey, television presenter and media personality, best known for his BBC television show Jim'll Fix It, and for being the first and last presenter of the long-running BBC music chart show Top of the Pops...
When Louis Met Jimmy was voted one of the top fifty documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain's Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. In When Louis Met the Hamiltons, the disgraced Tory
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP Neil Hamilton
Neil Hamilton (politician)
Mostyn Neil Hamilton is a former British barrister, teacher and Conservative MP. Since losing his seat in 1997 and leaving politics, Hamilton and his wife Christine have become media celebrities...
and his wife Christine
Christine Hamilton
Christine Hamilton is a British television personality and author, and the wife of former British Member of Parliament Neil Hamilton who was Minister for Corporate Affairs between 1992-1994....
were arrested following false allegations of indecent assault during the course of filming. In When Louis Met Max Clifford, Max Clifford
Max Clifford
Maxwell Frank Clifford is an English publicist, considered the highest-profile and best-known publicist in the United Kingdom...
tried to set Louis up. However, it backfired when Max Clifford was caught lying, as the crew was still recording his live microphone during a conversation. After this celebrity series concluded, a retrospective was aired, called Life with Louis. He was meant to do a similar programme with Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
before Martin Bashir
Martin Bashir
Martin Bashir is a British journalist and media personality, currently with NBC News as a contributor for its Dateline program, and an afternoon anchor for MSNBC, hosting Martin Bashir...
completed his documentary for ITV, but it was cancelled.
Selected episodes of When Louis Met... were included as bonus content on a Best-Of collection of Weird Weekends. The entire series has never been released on DVD.
BBC Two specials
In these special programmes, beginning in 2003, Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more natural tone. In March 2006, he signed a new deal with the BBC to make 10 films over the course of three years.Subjects for the specials include criminal gangs in Lagos, Neo-Nazis in America, ultra-Zionists in Israel and child psychiatry. A 2007 special, The Most Hated Family in America
The Most Hated Family in America
The Most Hated Family in America is a 2007 BBC documentary film written and presented by Louis Theroux about the family at the core of the Westboro Baptist Church. The organisation is led by Fred Phelps and located in Topeka, Kansas...
, received strong critical praise from the international media.
Books
His first book, The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, was published in Britain in 2005. In this book, Theroux returns to America to find out what has happened in the lives of some of the people he featured in his television programmes since he last saw them.Personal life
He lives in the London district of HarlesdenHarlesden
Harlesden is an area in the London Borough of Brent, northwest London, UK. Its main focal point is the Jubilee Clock which commemorates Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee....
with his partner, Nancy Strang, a TV director, and his two sons.
Awards and nominations
1996 Emmy AwardsEmmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
:
- Nominated: Outstanding Informational Series for TV NationTV NationProduction on the pilot episode of TV Nation began in January 1993. Moore initially turned to friends and colleagues in many production areas, while also making a point to ensure the show's employees were unionized. For the show's title sequence, graphic designer Chris Harvey put together the...
British Academy Television Awards 2001
British Academy Television Awards 2001
The 2001 British Academy Television Awards were held on Sunday May 13, 2001. The ceremony took place at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London.-Winners:*Best Actor**Winner: Michael Gambon — Longitude...
:
- Won: Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News) for Weird WeekendsLouis Theroux's Weird WeekendsLouis Theroux's Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses into the worlds of individuals and groups that they would not normally come into contact with or experience up close...
2002 Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
:
- Nominated: Best Presenter for When Louis Met…When Louis Met…When Louis Met... is a series of documentary films made by BAFTA award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux. The series was originally aired on BBC2 from 2000 to 2002....
British Academy Television Awards 2002
British Academy Television Awards 2002
The 2002 British Academy Television Awards were held on Sunday April 21, 2002. The ceremony was hosted by the television presenter Chris Tarrant, and broadcast on the ITV Network.-Winners:*Best Actor...
:
- Won: Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News) for When Louis Met…When Louis Met…When Louis Met... is a series of documentary films made by BAFTA award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux. The series was originally aired on BBC2 from 2000 to 2002....
- Nominated: Flaherty Documentary Award for When Louis Met the HamiltonsWhen Louis Met…When Louis Met... is a series of documentary films made by BAFTA award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux. The series was originally aired on BBC2 from 2000 to 2002....
Journalists John Safran
John Safran
John Safran is an Australian documentary maker and radio broadcaster, known for combining humour with explorations into religion and other issues...
and Harmon Leon cite him as an "important influence".
External links
- Theroux's website
- In Conversation with Louis Theroux at BAFTA - 19 February 2010
- Something weird about Louis Interview by Gyles BrandrethGyles BrandrethGyles Daubeney Brandreth is a British writer, broadcaster and former Conservative Member of Parliament and junior minister.-Early life:...
and published by the Telegraph (11 December 2001) - When Amazon Met Louis Interview with Amazon.comAmazon.comAmazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
- Weird & wonderful Interview by Jeremy Taylor for bmi Voyager Magazine (November 2007)