Ruby Wax

Ruby Wax’s background

Rising to fame during the 1980s and 1990s, co-writing and appearing in shows such as ‘Girls on Top’ and ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, she has entertained with her often brash and flamboyant personality for many years. Despite her work in helping to keep the nation’s spirits up, Ruby Wax has suffered from episodes of depression throughout her life and is determined to help others battle mental illness and to help eliminate the stigma attached to such illnesses.

Current / Past Roles & Positions

• Comedienne
• Actress
• Mental Health campaigner
• Writer Celebrity interviewer

Awards, Accolades, Achievements & Honours

Below are just some of the films, television series and documentaries which Ruby Wax has appeared in, written or script-edited:

• Absolutely Fabulous
• Girls on Top
• The Comic Strip Presents…
• French and Saunders
• Chariots of Fire (1981 film)
• Not the Nine O’Clock
• News Ruby Wax Meets…
• Ruby
• Red Dwarf
• Ruby Wax’s Mad Confessions
• Count Duckula

Engaging, refreshing, honest and funny, Ruby Wax’s unique approach to life and leadership is truly inspiring, as is her ability to speak candidly about mental illness.

A world famous comedienne, actor and script writer, Ruby Wax now runs management and leadership workshops and campaigns for greater public understanding of mental health issues. She has been open about her personal battle with depression and is now determined to assist others; to this end, she returned to university, graduating from Oxford University with a Masters degree in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Wax has also studied psychotherapy, counselling and neuroscience. She integrates what she has learned into her speaking, combining her knowledge of psychology with her natural ability to generate a rapport with her audience, teaching them how to become more understanding and successful in their leadership and in their lives. Her courses combine science, theory and practical elements, all held together by her conversational manner and trademark wit. In her work she draws on personal experiences, focusing not only on successful interviews and occasions, but on disastrous ones and how they were overcome and learned from. Her clients have included Skype, Orange, KPMG, The Welsh Assembly, McKinsey, and Women in Retail.

Some of the experiences focused on in her current work occurred during her long career in television. Becoming a household name in the 1980s, Ruby Wax has contributed to some of the UKs best loved sitcoms (including Absolutely Fabulous) and has become one of the most popular (and most outrageous) interviewers of all time. Her West End dark comedy, Losing It, in which she starred alongside Judith Owen, has been met with acclaim for its skillful and honest, yet humorous, take on becoming one of the 1 in 4 people who experience mental illness. She is one of the founders of blackdogtribe.com, a website which aims to help sufferers of mental illness obtain the help they need and to support each other.

Ruby Wax was born and brought up in Illinois and studied Psychology and drama at the University of California before moving to England in 1977. She trained as an actress at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before staring work with the Royal Shakespeare Company.