Eric Idle is an British-American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer-songwriter, and musician. He is best known as a member of the British surreal comedy troupe Monty Python, as well as a member of the rock band The Rutles. He is also well-known for portraying Commander Clement in Yellowbeard, The Bike Rider in National Lampoon's European Vacation, Paul "Dibs" Plutzker in the 1995 live-action film Casper, Ratty in the 1996 British film The Wind in the Willows, and for voicing Declan Desmond in Fox's The Simpsons, Devon in Quest for Camelot, Slyly the Arctic fox in 1998's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, and Merlin in DreamWorks' Shrek the Third.
For Disney, he voiced Mr. Parentheses in the Hercules TV series, Guzelian in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Pluto's Angel in Mickey Mouse Works and House of Mouse, and Waddlesworth in 102 Dalmatians. He also played Nigel Channing at Epcot's Journey Into Imagination With Figment, Coffin Ed in The Scream Team, the titular character of An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, and the rhyming narrator of the 2004 Miramax film Ella Enchanted (although not technically a Disney film). Additionally, he composed music for The Wild.
Idle was born in Harton Hospital in South Shields and attended St. George's Primary School. His mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and bringing up a child, so when Idle was seven, she enrolled him in the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder, where he dealt with abuse and bullying. He later attended Pembroke College in Cambridge, where he studied English. There, he met Graham Chapman and John Cleese, where they and Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam began the stages for Monty Python. The comedy troupe became popular with the show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the films: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life. Idle also contributed songs for the movies, such as "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and the "Galaxy Song", as well as wrote the book for the musical Spamalot, which is based off of Holy Grail and other works of theirs.
