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Louis Theroux

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Biography

Recent Role:
on Louis Theroux: Series Three
Gender:
Male
Louis Sebastian Theroux was born in Singapore in 1970. His father, the American novelist and travel writer, Paul Theroux, met his mother, who worked for the V.S.O., in Uganda. Louis’ older brother Marcel was born in Kampala, "so as children we sort of globe trotted." But his father decided to buy a family home in England, and they settled down in a big, rambling, dilapidated house in Wandsworth, South London. Louis went to Westminster School and then gained a First Class Degree in History at Oxford University.

On graduating, Louis decided to spend some time in the States. His

… More summer break got longer and longer. "I didn’t have a job lined up in England and I felt that at least by being in America I was broadening my mind." Marcel had just completed a post-graduate degree at Yale, so Louis stayed with him. "I did menial work to make money and spent two months with a glass blower who made unbelievably tasteless gilded cherub goblets.

Although initially resisting the idea of going into journalism. "All my friends were writing, and I wanted to be different." Louis found a job on a local paper in the sprawling city of San Jose, "a town where nothing ever happens." A year later he went to work for the New York-based satirical magazine, Spy, where "When I asked some rappers to freestyle on gun safety, one of them threatened to beat me up."

As a correspondent for Michael Moore’s 1995 series, TV Nation, Louis anchored sixteen segments. Theroux describes his first assignment: "The Klu Klux Klan were trying desperately hard to repackage themselves and make themselves seem cuddly and nice, but inevitably they left out racist stickers or hate filled T-shirts. It was quite an eye opener." Reports on Avon Ladies in the Amazon and on President Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Arkansas followed.

In 1995, Louis developed his own WEIRD WEEKENDS and produced a critically acclaimed documentary series premiere. As Theroux describes, "WEIRD WEEKENDS sets out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it’s almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don’t have to play up that stuff. I’m not a matinee idol disguised as a nerd."

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  • Theroux gets to the point

    British journalist Louis Theroux is back on Channel Seven next week with another series of documentaries that show why he is so fearless.

    Theroux frequently films in the US, as something of an outsider looking in. With subjects that are always controversial, his access to subjects is impressive indeed.

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