8 Times Sacha Baron Cohen Almost Ruined His Career For The Sake Of Comedy

Sacha Baron Cohen is no stranger to controversy. He's considered to be one of the most successful comedians of the modern age, but that's apparently not for his lack of trying to dismantle his own career by offending just about everyone on the planet. Beginning with Da Ali G Show, and through his four 'character' movies, Sacha Baron Cohen has in his time aggravated a shocking range of people. Now, with his latest film, The Brothers Grimsby (check out the trailer above), he threatens to insult even more. What you'll find over the next few pages is a list of all the times Sacha Baron Cohen has been been sued, threatened by the establishment or offended whole nations; his most controversial, potentially career-ending moments. He's offended whole swathes of the world, but these are eight times when Baron Cohen's career could have been derailed, all as a result of his heroic quest to make good comedy. 8) The Time He Got A Former MP To Smoke A Joint On-Air If the overly-sensitive British media had gotten its way, Sacha Baron Cohen might never have made it across the pond to find success in America. When it was first aired, Da Ali G Show was groundbreaking, critically acclaimed...and wildly unpopular with the UK's conservative press. Two common complaints leveled at the show were that it was vulgar, and racist for its depiction of black street culture. One incident in particular saw the British media attempt to shut Baron Cohen down. It involved Baron Cohen, as Ali G, convincing ex-MP Neil Hamilton to apparently smoke a joint in an interview. This was then televised, prompting the British media to collectively lose its shit. Unfortunately for the press, Baron Cohen upped sticks to HBO and managed to return with a US-set Ali G Show three years later. 7) The Time He Was Investigated By Both The Police And FBI Back when Sacha Baron Cohen was still relatively unknown enough to go out into the world as one of his characters without the public getting wise, he went in hard, duping anyone he could in the most outrageous ways possible. Unsurprisingly, such an approach also left him open to intervention by a law not always realizing Ali G/Borat/Bruno weren't actually real people. On Borat, the law got involved a lot. A lot a lot. As he was pranking his way across America as the Kazakh TV host, Baron Cohen didn't just have the American law on his ass one or two times - the police were called out on 92 separate occasions. Furthermore, Baron Cohen went to such lengths in playing his giant joke on the USA that the FBI actually opened a file on him. Apparently they heard reports of a "terrorist traveling in an ice cream van" and decided to start keeping track. 6) The Time Kazakhstan Threatened To Sue The controversy Baron Cohen caused on a national scale with Borat wasn't just limited to the US. While during the shoot he seemingly had a good chunk of American law enforcement trying to shut him down, it was after the film came out that an entire nation actually officially threatened the comedian with legal action. Though Kazakhstan has since embraced the movie, Borat's release in 2006 prompted the Kazakh government to call the film "a concoction of bad taste and ill manners...incompatible with the ethics and civilized behavior of Kazakhstan's people." Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened Baron Cohen with a lawsuit, but over time the country's official position changed, to the point where 'Borat' was invited to visit. 5) The Time Multiple Lawsuits Stacked Up For Borat There was no single legal action against Borat and Baron Cohen quite as big as the ninth-largest country in the world threatening to sue, but the film was all the same an absolute lawsuit magnet. For starters, the Romanian town of Glod, which played Borat's home village, attempted to sue Baron Cohen for $38 million. The suit was thrown out, but that wasn't the end of Borat's legal trouble. The individuals who tried to sue Baron Cohen for Borat include: the frat bros seen in the film talking about "the f***ing ho's", Macedonian singer Esma Redžepova, one of the people on the subway carriage that 'Borat' releases a chicken on and the man who gave Borat a driving lesson. That's hardly all of them though, and the film was also criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and the Veteran Feminists of America. 4) The Time A Woman Claimed 'Bruno' Left Her Disabled Bruno, like Borat, was a production that took a little bit of flak. Beyond a few LGBT groups criticizing the film, however, Bruno wasn't quite as controversial as its predecessor. The biggest scandal regarding the film wasn't related to the content, but a rather serious off-screen incident involving real bodily harm that turned out to be...well, not true, basically. Richelle Olson's claim was that a struggle with Baron Cohen and his film crew at a bingo tournament had left her needing a wheelchair to get around. And so, she sued. It was incredibly damning, potentially career-ending stuff. In the end, though, it was revealed to be completely false. Olson later changed her claim to say that Baron Cohen had never struck her, but that emotional trauma had left her requiring a wheelchair. The case was eventually dismissed. 3) The Time He Pissed Off A Palestinian Militant Group You've probably never heard of al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Sacha Baron Cohen certainly has, though: al-Aqsa is a militant group based in the West Bank. Well, not really - more accurately it's an entire coalition of multiple armed Palestinian groups, officially designated a terrorist organization by the US for its repeated acts of violence in Israel. And following the release of Bruno, these people wanted to kill Baron Cohen. He knows, because they told him. It all started when Ayman Abu Aita was interviewed by 'Bruno' and portrayed as a terrorist and leader of al-Aqsa, which Aita disputed. al-Aqsa then got involved, calling the interview "a dirty use of our brother Ayman." After he started receiving death threats from the group, Baron Cohen had to actually beef up security, just to increase his chances of surviving to make another movie. 2) The Time His Films Got Repeatedly Banned In Major Countries Unsurprisingly for a part of the world that regularly censors films for content, the Middle East in general didn't take kindly to Borat. Where screening Bruno was outlawed in individual nations for its depiction of homosexuality (Ukraine for one cited "homosexual perversion"), Borat was straight up banned in every Arab nation except Lebanon. Like Borat, Baron Cohen's The Dictator - his fourth picture featuring one of his characters in the lead - also proved controversial. Again, only Lebanon screened Baron Cohen's film out of all the Arab states, while it was banned in Malaysia and Kazakhstan and censored in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Italy. And despite obviously being such a risky commercial prospect, Hollywood amazingly has continued to fund Baron Cohen. 1) The Time He Gave Donald Trump HIV We've yet to see how this one plays out, but it's certainly causing a lot of controversy already: in The Brothers Grimsby, one joke involves Donald Trump - Republican frontrunner in this year's election - becoming infected with HIV. Daniel Radcliffe is the butt of the HIV joke, too. But you know, Radcliffe doesn't potentially stand to become president of the United States next year. The Brothers Grimsby is set to be released soon, at which point we'll see just how Trump reacts; it's difficult to imagine he'll behave favorably. With the very real possibility that President Trump would just straight up nuke a country he doesn't like, it doesn't seem that far-fetched to imagine he might also make a law that bans Baron Cohen from ever entering his country or working in Hollywood again.