What Is Richard Ayoade's Net Worth?
Richard Ayoade is an English actor, comedian, writer, and director who has a net worth of $4 million. Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness wrote "Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight," which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2000; the play earned a Perrier Award nomination, and its sequel won the Perrier Comedy Award a year later. By 2004, Garth Marenghi's character appeared on a Channel 4 comedy series called "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace." Ayoade also worked on "The Mighty Boosh," a radio series that began airing in 2001. Soon after its launch, "The Mighty Boosh" was adapted for television.
Richard's most recognizable role, however, comes from his character Maurice Moss on Channel 4's "The IT Crowd," a role for which he won Outstanding Actor at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival. In 2014, he earned a BAFTA Award for his performance on the show. Ayoade's directorial debut came in 2010 with the film "Submarine" at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival. He earned a BAFTA nod for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for the film. In addition to film and TV work, Richard has carved out a niche in music videos, directing several for the Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian. His other TV and film credits include "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers," "At the Apollo," "The Watch," "Community," "Full English," and "Strange Hill High." He has also published the books "Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey" (2014), "The Grip of Film" (2017), "Ayoade on Top" (2019), and the children's book "The Book That No One Wanted to Read" (2022).
Early Life
Richard Ayoade was born on May 23, 1977, in Hammersmith, London, England. He is the son of a Nigerian father, Layide Ade Laditi Ayoade, and a Norwegian mother, Dagny Baassuik Ayoade. When Richard was a child, his family relocated to Ipswich. As a teenager, he became interested in film "beyond 'Star Wars' and 'Back to the Future" and started watching films directed by Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, and Federico Fellini. Ayoade attended St Joseph's College and was so "obsessed" with the J.D. Salinger novel "The Catcher in the Rye" that he began dressing like its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. In 1995, Richard enrolled at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he studied law, won the Martin Steele Prize for a play he produced, and served as president of Footlights, the school's amateur theatrical club. At the time, the vice-president of Footlights was John Oliver, who went on to host HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" and win more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. The two wrote and starred in many productions together, including the club's touring productions of "Emotional Baggage" and "Between a Rock and a Hard Place." In a 2011 interview with "The Guardian," Ayoade stated, "My parents didn't go to university and weren't brought up in England. They hadn't heard of any other universities other than Cambridge or Oxford. It was just through a kind of ignorance that I somehow managed to get in. I wasn't really intending to study law, but the idea of doing a non-vocational degree just seemed somewhat, you know… Regency-era. Indulgent. Unacceptable. The idea that you would go and study English or philosophy or something as some manner of broadening your mind was completely out of the question really."
Career
Ayoade and fellow Footlights actor Matthew Holness co-wrote the stage show "Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight," which they performed at the 2000 Edinburgh Fringe. The show earned a Perrier Award nomination and featured Holness as fictional horror writer Garth Marenghi and Ayoade as Marenghi's publisher, Dean Learner. In 2001, Richard won a Perrier Comedy Award for co-writing and starring in the sequel, "Garth Marenghi's Netherhead." In 2004, the duo starred on the Channel 4 series "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace," and Ayoade also wrote and directed episodes of the series. In the early 2000s, he also co-wrote, directed, and appeared in BBC Three's "AD/BC: A Rock Opera" with Matt Berry, wrote for the sketch comedy series "Bruiser," and appeared in the 2004 HBO movie "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers." Richard had a recurring role as Saboo on BBC Three's "The Mighty Boosh" and also served as a script editor and wrote the season three episode "The Chokes." He played Ned Smarks on the 2005 Channel 4 sitcom "Nathan Barley," and in 2006, he reprised the role of Dean Learner to host the comedy talk show "Man to Man with Dean Learner," in which every guest was played by Matthew Holness. That year Ayoade also began starring as Maurice Moss on the Channel 4 series "The IT Crowd" alongside Chris O'Dowd and Katherine Parkinson. The series aired 25 episodes over four seasons and earned Richard a BAFTA Award for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme in 2014.
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In 2010, Ayoade directed his first feature film, "Submarine." He adapted the film from the 2008 Joe Dunthorne novel of the same name, and it received numerous awards and nominations. In 2011, Richard directed an episode of the NBC sitcom "Community" as well as the stand-up comedy special "Tommy Tiernan: Crooked Man," and in 2012, he co-starred with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill in the film "The Watch." He wrote and directed the 2013 film "The Double," which starred Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska, then he voiced Mr. Pickles in the stop-motion animated film "The Boxtrolls" (2014), Templeton on the puppet-animated series "Strange Hill High" (2013–2014), and Onion on the Cartoon Network's "Apple & Onion" (2018–2021). Ayoade hosted "Gadget Man" (2013–2015), "Travel Man" (2015–2019), and "The Crystal Maze" (2017–2020) on Channel 4, and he hosted the British Academy Television Awards in 2020, 2021, and 2022. He had a cameo in 2017's "Paddington 2," voiced Treebor in "Early Man" (2018), Ice Cream Cone in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part" (2019), Counselor Jerry in "Soul" (2020), and Professor Rupert Marmalade IV in "The Bad Guys" (2022), and he appeared in the films "The Souvenir" (2019), "The Souvenir Part II" (2021), and "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain" (2021). Richard hosted the comedy panel show "Question Team" from 2021 to 2022, and he voiced Gordy / Alva Gunderson on Netflix's "Disenchantment" (2021–2023), Tyrannis on Fox's "Krapopolis" (2023–present), and Kenny "Xeni" Dewberry on Disney+'s "Dream Productions" (2024).
Personal Life
Richard married Lydia Fox on September 8, 2007, and they have welcomed two children together. Lydia comes from a family of actors. Her grandparents, Robin Fox and Angela Worthington, were actors, and Lydia, her father, James Fox, and several of her siblings and cousins are also actors. Lydia appeared Richard's films "Submarine" and "The Double."
In 2020, Richard became involved in a public feud with Lydia's brother Laurence Fox after Laurence asked him to publicly support him on Twitter after making a controversial appearance on the debate program "Question Time." On the episode, Fox called an audience member racist for saying that he was a "a white, privileged male" and insisted that the media's criticism of Meghan Markle had nothing to do with racism, stating, "We're the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe. It's so easy to throw the card of racism at everybody and it's really starting to get boring now." Ayoade reportedly told Fox, "You have never encountered racism," to which Laurence replied that he had once worked in Kenya and that "racism can be deferential."
Awards and Nominations
Ayoade has earned three BAFTA Award nominations, winning for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme for "The IT Crowd" in 2014. His other nominations were for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for "Submarine" (2012) and Best Feature for "Travel Man: 48 Hours in…" (2017). He has also received three British Independent Film Award nominations, taking home the prize for Best Screenplay for "Submarine" in 2011. "Submarine" was nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award as well, and Richard's other nomination was for Best Supporting Actor for "The Souvenir: Part II" (2021). "Submarine" also earned him awards from the Giffoni Film Festival and Palm Springs International Film Festival and nominations from the "Evening Standard" British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards, Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards, Chlotrudis Awards, Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards, Georgia Film Critics Association, and Odesa International Film Festival. For "The Double," Ayoade received nominations from the Hamburg Film Festival, London Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Black Reel Awards, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and British Screenwriters' Awards.
In 2008, Richard won a Golden Nymph for Outstanding Actor – Comedy Series for "The IT Crowd" at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival, and in 2012, he earned an Online Film & Television Association Award for Best Direction in a Comedy Series for "Community." In 2015, the cast of "The Boxtrolls" won a Behind the Voice Actors Award for Best Vocal Ensemble in a Feature Film, and Ayoade was nominated for Best Male Vocal Performance in a Feature Film in a Supporting Role. In 2019, he received a National Film Award nomination for Best Performance in an Animation film for "Early Man," and in 2022, he earned a London Critics Circle Film Award nomination for Supporting Actor of the Year for "The Souvenir: Part II" and an Indiana Film Journalists Association Award nomination for Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance for "The Bad Guys."
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