I was watching (probably a rerun) of Top Gear on BBC WORLD last week, when I caught an episode with Rowan Atkinson. Realized that we haven’t seen that face in a while, so here are some old gems from the man with the funny faces!

It was very cool watching him as himself and not one of the many hilarious characters he plays. Not only does he emit British chic, he is a man with secrets! Rowan loves cars and knows a hell lot about them. Watch him speak cars, his M.O. in acting, and how he beats other celebrity contenders as the fastest man behind the wheel on the show.

Ha ha, jolly good! This made me think of all the fun characters he’s played over the years.

Mr.Bean

Mr. Bean continues to be Rowan’s funniest and most memorable character. The clip above shows the innocent and naïve man-child in Bean: The Holiday. In the clip, Mr. Bean, with the little lost boy, tries to “earn” some money for food and other stuff in a rather ingenius way. The scene is hilarious and shows Mr. Bean doing an opera bit of a sobbing mother (I’m guessing).

The Priest: a piece he did in one of his stand-up shows:

This show had Rowan playing a number of funny characters in skits. I particularly love him playing Lucifer and the cocky principle in The Fatal Beating. This clip below has Rowan playing a Priest reading a fictitious piece from a Holy Book. It is a hilarious edited piece based on Jesus and the Wedding in Cana and plugged in with modern phrases. The miracle-meets-stage-magic jokes are quite fun!

Rowan could easily be the funniest man alive.

After Charlie Chaplin, Rowan is the king of slapstick comedy with a career graph spanning across infamous characters from Mr. Bean, The Black Adder and Johnny English. His main USP is his face. Rowan will always tickle audiences when he emotes random events just through his expressions and his funny inventive ways of pronouncing the most common words like “Bob!”

Rowan News:

• Last year Rowan met with a car crash in England. He drove his $1.2 million McLaren F1 off the road and hit a tree suffering a minor shoulder injury.
• In Feb 2012, his death rumors trended on a micro-blogging site and became a rage in a span of 2 hours. The hoax was so powerful that Wikipedia briefly edited Rowan’s page.
• Recently a disgruntled movie-goer filed a lawsuit against the producer of horror flick Mr. Bean Kesurupan Depe (Mr. Bean is Possessed by Depe) for misleading consumers. Muhammad Rudjito, the lawyer who felt misled commented, “I filed the police report because I was cheated by the promotional posters of the film, which say that Mr. Bean will be featured, but he never appeared in the movie. This is fraud.” (As told to the Jakarta Post)