Ali Cook


Ali Cook is an English actor and comedian originating from Yorkshire. Cook played Sgt. Paul McMellon in the feature film Kajaki, which won the Producer of The Year Award at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 2015.
Cook's career started on the Channel 5 sketch series, The Jerry@Trick show with the alternative comedians Jerry Sadowitz, Phil Nichol and Boothby Graffoe. Andrew Newman, then the head of comedy at Five, spotted Cook during tapings which lead to him writing and starring in seven of his own comedy and Magic series for Channel 4, Channel 5, and Sky1. His Channel 4 Series Dirty Tricks was nominated for a British Comedy Award and The Golden Rose of Montreux.
He regularly tours the UK and internationally with comedy promoters Off the Kerb in between acting commitments.

Television career

Cook began on Jerry Sadowitz's television sketch show Jerry@Trick Show before moving on to co-write and star in TV series, including Monkey Magic , Psychic Secrets Revealed with Derren Brown and the Secret World of Magic for Sky One.
Cook was the star of Channel 4's late night show Dirty Tricks.
Cook starred in the first hosted by Jonathan Ross. In 2011 he performed his Houdini-style water Torture Escape on The Slammer. He has also starred in the prestigious France 2 series Le Plus Grand Cabaret du monde produced by Magic. Recent television credits include: Mr Selfridge, the role of the villainous Patrick in multiple episodes of Emmerdale in 2016 and The ABC Murders in 2018.

Television

Cook portrayed Sgt. Paul "Spud" McMellon in 2014's Kajaki, which won the Producer of The Year Award at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 2015.
Cook stars alongside Katherine Parkinson and Jay Pharoah in 2018's How to Sell A War, directed by Rudolph Herzog and produced by Film and Music Entertainment.
Other recent credits include: Muscle directed by Gerard Johnson, In the Cloud directed by Robert Scott Wildes for Sony Pictures, the role of enterprising gangster Teddy "Odd Legs" in Once Upon a Time in London directed by Simon Rumley, and British Independent Film Awards nominated thriller Isolani in which Cook was directed by Paul Wilson, 2016's The Call Up, and The Anomaly, written, directed and produced by Noel Clarke in which Cook stars opposite Ian Somerhalder, Luke Hemsworth and Brian Cox and 2013's Get Lucky, playing a professional thief alongside Luke Treadaway.
In 2011 he appeared in Outside Bet, directed by Sacha Bennett, alongside Bob Hoskins, Phil Davis and Jenny Agutter. He has played the lead role in ten British short film dramas, most notably the psychotic character Greg in Andrew Saunder's and Stephen Frears' Striklem. In 2007 he wrote, produced and starred in his own comedy short, The Enchanter: The Crime Fighting Magician, a spoof of 1970s detective series, directed by Adrian Vitoria. In 2011, Cook was an executive producer on the feature film Dark Tide, starring Halle Berry.

Filmography

Feature films

Cook has written and performed three critically acclaimed sell-out Edinburgh solo shows: A Touch of Vegas, Pieces of Strange, and Principles and Deceptions.