Billy Connolly

William "Billy" Connolly, CBE (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname "The Big Yin" ("The Big One"). His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer, firstly in the Humblebums alongside friend Gerry Rafferty until 1971, and subsequently as a solo artist. In the early 1970s, Connolly made the transition from folk- singer with a comedic persona to fully fledged comedian, and is now considered by many to be the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Connolly is also an actor and has appeared in such films as Water (1985), Indecent Proposal (1993), Pocahontas (1995), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Mrs. Brown (1997), The Boondock Saints (1999), The Man Who Sued God (2001), The Last Samurai (2003), Timeline (2003), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006), Open Season (2006), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), Open Season 2 (2008), Brave (2012), Quartet (2012), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). Connolly reprised his role as Noah "Il Duce" MacManus in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009). 2Early life 3Ancestry Connolly's paternal grandfather, whom, like his paternal grandmother, he never met, was an Irish immigrant who left Ireland when he was ten years old. His great-great-great (Charles Mills, a coast guard, 1796–1870) and great-great (Bartholomew Valentine) grandfathers were from Connemara. Connolly's mother's family came from the west coast of Scotlan