Mike Myers is one of the most inventive comic performers of his era, a Canadian writer-actor whose ability to build fully inhabited characters from scratch produced two of the most profitable comedy franchises in Hollywood history. He broke through on Saturday Night Live before crossing to film with Wayne’s World (1992), then created the Austin Powers series beginning in 1997 and voiced Shrek across four films beginning in 2001, building a body of work that has entertained successive generations without losing its hold on the original audience. The characters he created in that run became cultural shorthand in a way that belongs to very few comedic performers.

On screen, Myers operates through a total physical and vocal commitment to character that makes his best work feel less like performance and more like inhabited invention, a quality the Shrek films delivered entirely through voice alone. His rubber-faced expressiveness and instinct for the joke that goes one beat further than expected gave him a comic signature that Saturday Night Live sharpened, and Hollywood scaled up to enormous effect. He has worked selectively in recent decades, but the affection surrounding Wayne’s World and Austin Powers has only deepened as both have settled into the comedy canon.