Ali Cook

Ali Cook (also credited as Alistair Cook) is an English actor and comedian from Yorkshire. Cook played Sgt. Paul McMellon in the feature film Kajaki, which won the Producer of The Year Award at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 2015.
He recently wrote and acted in the short film The Cunning Man, winner of the Arri Alexa short film competition which was long listed for a BAFTA and has currently won over 30 awards.
Early life and career
Cook's career started on the Channel 5 sketch series, The Jerry@Trick show with the alternative comedians Phil Nichol and Boothby Graffoe. Andrew Newman, then the head of comedy at Five, spotted Cook during tapings which lead to him writing and starring in seven of his own comedy and Magic series for Channel 4, Channel 5, and Sky1. His Channel 4 Series Dirty Tricks was nominated for a British Comedy Award and The Golden Rose of Montreux.
Television career
Cook's acted in the Channel five sketch series Jerry@Trick Show before moving on to co-write and star in TV series, including the The Golden Rose of Montreux nominated Monkey Magic (UK TV series), Psychic Secrets Revealed with Derren Brown for Channel 5 and the Secret World of Magic for Sky One.
Cook was the star of Channel 4's British Comedy Award nominated, late night show Dirty Tricks.
Cook starred in the first Penn & Teller: Fool Us (ITV) hosted by Jonathan Ross. In 2011 he performed his Houdini-style water torture cell escape on The Slammer (CBBC).
Ali Cook was involved in Impossible, a sketch show of magic that includes mind-reading, escapology, stunts, and illusions. The show incorporated digital elements, with fellow magician Jamie Allan using iPhones for illusions.
He has developed and practised various tricks and illusions in his rehearsal studio in East London. Cook can perform the suspended animation trick where a person is locked inside a glass box and appears outside the box moments later. Cook purchased the trick from an Australian seller for £11,000. Another notable illusion he uses is the fire cage.
Three shows were slated for the West End: Impossible, followed by performances by Derren Brown, and then The Illusionists.
Cook maintains that while the tools of magic may evolve, the foundational tricks — which include appearance, disappearance, transposition, transformation, penetration, levitation, and mind powers — remain consistent.
He has also starred in the France 2 series Le Plus Grand Cabaret du monde produced by Magic. Recent television credits include: Ragdoll for AMC, Mr Selfridge, the role of the villainous Patrick in multiple episodes of Emmerdale in 2016 and the German officer in the BBC's 2018 adaptation of Agatha Cristie's The ABC Murders.
Television
Film
Cook portrayed Sgt. Paul "Spud" McMellon in 2014's Kajaki. The production won the Producer of The Year Award at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 2015.
Cook stars alongside Katherine Parkinson and Jay Pharoah in 2018's How To Fake A War, directed by Rudolph Herzog and produced by Film and Music Entertainment.
Other recent credits include: Twist for Sky Cinema, The Obscure Life of the Grand Duke of Corsica starring Timothy Spall, Muscle directed by Gerard Johnson, In the Cloud directed by Robert Scott Wildes for Sony Pictures, Once Upon a Time in London directed by Simon Rumley, and British Independent Film Awards nominated thriller Isolani.
In 2011 he appeared in Outside Bet, directed by Sacha Bennett, alongside Bob Hoskins, Phil Davis and Jenny Agutter. He has played the lead role in ten British short film dramas, most notably the psychotic character Greg in Andrew Saunder's and Stephen Frears' Striklem
In 2011, Cook was an executive producer on the feature film Dark Tide, starring Halle Berry.
Filmography
Feature films
Short films
2019 The Cunning Man, Harvest Films
Theatre
Cook has written and performed three critically acclaimed sell-out Edinburgh solo shows: A Touch of Vegas (2008), Pieces of Strange (2010), and Principles and Deceptions (2011)
Stage
Further reading
Notes
External links
Ali Cook on Instagram
Ali Cook on Twitter
English magicians
English comedy writers
English male television actors
Living people
1975 births