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Happy birthday, Eddie Izzard! The brilliant actor, comedian, and trans rights campaigner is 61 today (February 7), so we're celebrating by making her our British Icon of the Week. Here are 10 things we appreciate about this great British original.

1. She is an award-winning comedian.

Izzard won two Emmys for her 1999 stand-up special Dress to Kill, which was recorded at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre.

2. She has performed standup comedy in six different languages.

Namely: English, Arabic, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. In a 2018 interview with Babbel Magazine, Izzard revealed that she writes each show in English before translating it "from the back forward" with help from her brother Mark Izzard, a linguistics expert. It's a gradual, ongoing process. "Like when I went to Spain, I didn’t speak any Spanish. So I got there, and I did the whole of my English show, so I did about an hour in English, and then at the end I did a two-minute encore in Spanish," she explained. "The second night, I did a four-minute encore in Spanish. Then a six-minute. I add two minutes every night, and that’s how I build up a show."

3. She is also a terrific actor.

Izzard has worked prolifically on both sides of the Atlantic in TV series including The Riches, Hannibal, and Stay Close. She also scored a Tony nomination for her 2003 performance in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, a powerful play about a British couple caring for their daughter who has cerebral palsy.

4. She never shirks an acting challenge.

Izzard is currently starring in a very unique version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations at The Greenwich House Theater in New York. Adapted by Mark Izzard, it's a one-woman show in which Eddie plays 19 different characters. "Charles Dickens loved performing his own works in America, and so I thought it would be a wonderful idea to launch Great Expectations here," Eddie says on the website. "I always feel at home in New York, and I believe if Charles Dickens were alive today, he would feel at home too."

You can watch Izzard talking about the show – which runs until February 11 – in the interview below.

5. She is determined to become an MP (Member of Parliament). 

Last year, Izzard put herself forward to become the Labour Party's candidate for Sheffield Central, a constituency in northern England. However, as The Guardian reported in December, she lost out to local councillor Abtisam Mohamed. Izzard has since said that her political ambitions remain undimmed, telling The Daily Beast that she hopes to stand as the Labour Party candidate in another constituency in northern England. "I plan to keep my feelers out, and keep fighting away,” she said.

6. She is a tireless advocate for trans rights.

Earlier in her career, Izzard often referred to herself as an "action transvestite" or "gender-fluid." In 2020, she confirmed that she now uses "she" and "her" pronouns because she wants "to be based in girl mode from now on." Discussing her gender identity with The Daily Beast, she said: "When ‘trans’ came into the language, I realized that’s essentially where I am. People said to me I couldn’t be a transvestite if I was trans. People shouted at me into the bread bin, they shouted at me online."

"[But] I didn’t see it as a huge change, calling myself transgender after calling myself transvestite," she continued. ‘"Trans’ is the thing. Being transgender is the overall grouping, and from very early on I realized that was the grouping I was in." She also spoke about how she deals with constant transphobia, saying: "Trans people have to keep going. I just ignore it. I don’t have a magic button, but I have carried on for 37 years. To any trans person, indeed to LGBTQ people generally, I say: live your lives and please continue over-achieving. Being your authentic self is great.”

7. She is a model railway enthusiast.

Since 2016, the Izzard Family Model Railway has been on display at the Bexhill Museum in East Sussex, England. Eddie's parents John and Dorothy began making it in the late-1950s when they were living in Yemen; it was completed around a decade later by John, Eddie, and Mark while Dorothy was battling cancer, the disease that later claimed her life. You can check out photos of the impressive and rather poignant family memento on the museum's website.

8. She is great friends with Dame Judi Dench.

In the 2017 movie Victoria & Abdul, they play a mother and son who don't get on at all: Queen Victoria and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. However, in real life, the two actors really bonded and Izzard has revealed that Dench now sends him a banana with "good luck!" written on it every time he launches a show. You can watch her chatting about their friendship below.

9. She has run a lot of marathons – and we mean a lot.

In 2009, Izzard completed 43 marathons in 51 days for the BBC's Sport Relief appeal, running all over the UK. Then in 2016, she ran 27 marathons in 27 days across South Africa for the same charity. When the UK was effectively locked down in January 2021, Izzard ran 31 virtual marathons in 32 days as part of her Make Humanity Great Again initiative, raising more than £300,000 through a Crowdfunder.

George Clooney, with whom she starred in Ocean's Thirteen, was one of the friendly faces cheering her on at the finish.

10. She loves challenging people's preconceptions.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2021, Izzard pointed out that running isn't just good for her mental health and physical fitness. "It's also changed people’s attitude towards me, too – being a trans person who is an endurance runner is no bad thing," she explained. "People don't expect a trans woman to be able to run 130 marathons for charity and it changes their sense of what a trans woman is. I can see in their eyes they go: well, fair play."

Do you have a favorite Eddie Izzard role or standup show?