Brett Goldstein, the comedian who ran a strip club in Marbella before finding fame with 'Ted Lasso'

“He’s here, he’s there, he’s every fucking where: Roy Kent, Roy Kent!” chants the loyal Richmond crowd in tribute to the captain of the struggling English football club at the heart of the TV series Ted Lasso. It seemed almost prophetic of what awaited Brett Goldstein, the 46-year-old actor who plays the gruff Kent. Since joining the hit Apple TV comedy’s main cast, having originally been hired only as a writer, he has gone from being virtually unknown outside the United Kingdom to starring in a romantic comedy with Jennifer Lopez, appearing alongside Harrison Ford in a television series, and becoming Marvel’s new Hercules.

“I’d get tiny acting jobs, I did stand-up comedy and I would edit other people’s scripts. I always earned just enough to be able to pay my rent and go to the cinema,” Goldstein told the British edition of Men’s Health, whose cover he graced last August. “But I wasn’t getting any bigger. No one saw any of the stuff I was making,” he recalled.

On August 5, however, the first episode of the fourth season of Ted Lasso, whose finale will air on October 7, became the most-watched series premiere in Apple TV’s history. Despite this, Goldstein has said that while the team sensed they were making something special, they had no inkling the series would become such a phenomenon.

Then in 2021, he won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Roy Kent, an achievement he repeated in 2022. “Last time I was here, I was told not to swear and I did and I’m sorry but it meant the feed got cut back home in the U.K. so my family never got to hear me say this, so thank you for this second chance,” he joked during his second acceptance speech, in a moment that was pure Roy Kent.

His character is one of the audience’s favorites. The role was not written for him, but it was, in part, written by him. Goldstein was hired by the team behind Jason Sudeikis, the series’ co-creator and star, as a writer for the first 10 episodes. But after feeling a strong connection to the footballer who was as gruff as he was lovable, he took the risk of sending the creators a video of himself performing several Roy Kent scenes.

“I emailed it. I said, ‘Look, I don’t make anyone uncomfortable and if this is shit, pretend you never got it and I will never ask again. So you can ignore this email if you want,’” he recalled in an interview with Awards Radar. The gamble paid off.

Goldstein always knew he wanted a career in the arts and studied film at the University of Warwick, but his working life began in a strip club in Marbella when he was 20. That period provided plenty of material for his routines when he started making a living as a stand-up comedian around 2006.

“The show is about the time when my dad had a mid-life crisis and bought a strip club in Marbella, instead of a new car, and how I ended up running it. It was a strange time, particularly as none of us had any experience of this sort of world before,” he explained in 2011, when he was appearing at the Edinburgh Festival for the ninth time.

Despite his growing success as an actor, the Briton has not abandoned his stand-up career. Five films and TV series featuring Goldstein have been released in 2026, but he has set aside the final months of the year, from October 23 to December 6, for a U.S. tour with his new show, Sex, Death & Small Talk, recommended for audiences aged 15 and over. “Do not bring your kids! There is nothing for them here!” Goldstein wrote in a post on his Instagram account, where he has 1.6 million followers.

The tour follows the success of his first HBO stand-up special, The Second Best Night of Your Life, which premiered in 2025 after a sold-out North American tour. “As long as I’m allowed to, I would love to act, write and do stand-up. I would never want to stop any of them,” he told The Wrap last year.

Comedy does not always feature in his work. In At the Sea (2026), the drama starring Amy Adams that premiered last February, Goldstein plays a former heroin addict who is hardly known for his sense of humor. What is becoming a habit for the actor, however, is appearing in projects he has helped create himself. One of the most recent examples is the series Shrinking, which received 10 Emmy nominations at this year’s ceremony on September 14. Goldstein is an executive producer and writer on the show and is also part of the main cast, alongside names such as Jason Segel and his personal idol, Harrison Ford.

“I’ve been very lucky. I’ve met and worked with a lot of very famous people, who are brilliant. And after a week, most of them are just people, and you get on and you’re friends,” Goldstein told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I’ve been with Harrison Ford for over three years. He texts me and I go, ‘Fucking hell! Harrison Ford’s texted!’” he added with a laugh.

In addition to appearing in the Prime Video hit The Sheep Detectives, in which he voices the twin rams in Hugh Jackman’s flock, Goldstein spent part of the summer promoting Office Romance, the Netflix romantic comedy he co-wrote with Joe Kelly, co-creator of Ted Lasso, which he co-stars in with Jennifer Lopez.

“I think she’s a tremendously underrated actor. I think everyone kind of takes for granted all the things she does, but she’s a fantastic actor,” Goldstein said of Lopez in early June. “And in this genre, in particular, it’s special. I don’t know. When I saw it up close, when we did our first scene together, I was like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck it is you do’—I didn’t say it. I was thinking it. It’s a real, like, industrial-strength charisma and charm, or whatever it is.”

“I just did a movie with Brett Goldstein and I’d say he was the best kisser,” Lopez confessed in May when asked about the best on-screen kiss of her career.

The pair displayed such easy chemistry while promoting the film, constantly exchanging affectionate gestures, smiles and lingering looks in public, that the press eagerly began speculating about a real-life romance. “[We’re] not dating,” the singer of On the Floor eventually clarified during a joint appearance on the Today show. “Correct,” was Goldstein’s short reply.

Beyond his low-profile relationship with British actress and comedian Beth Rylance (“Beth, I love you,” he said while accepting his first Emmy), Goldstein’s romantic life remains largely a mystery. His relationship with Rylance ended in August 2022.

Two months earlier, Goldstein had made his debut in the lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe with a brief cameo as Hercules in the post-credits scene of Thor: Love and Thunder, teasing a larger role for the character in future installments of the superhero franchise.

As he told The Playlist at the time, he was given only two weeks’ notice before filming. “On the day, I mean, I’m doing 400 pushups that day. I was fit to explode. I did the best I could on that day,” he said of preparing physically for the role. In his recent interview with Men’s Health, he also joked about the reasons behind his casting: “I only realized when I first went to LA what an anomaly I was. When I first went in a rooftop pool, I think someone called pest control. Also, Marvel didn’t have any issue with it. It’s probably why they cast me.”

Much of Goldstein’s stand-up material draws on details from his private life, yet the actor is fiercely protective of both his own privacy and that of those around him. Even so, he has occasionally made exceptions to highlight causes he considers important. In 2024, for example, he revealed on Late Night with Seth Meyers that Harrison Ford’s character in Shrinking — a veteran therapist whose life is increasingly affected by Parkinson’s disease — was inspired by his father.

“My dad has Parkinson’s, and it wasn’t something we weren’t going to talk about publicly when we were talking about the show,” he said in 2024, adding that his father loved the idea of being associated with the actor who played Indiana Jones.

In his interview with Men’s Health, Goldstein also opened up about his own experience with depression, a struggle that is likewise reflected in the series.

“‘I wasn’t even auditioning for anything [...] It was all a bit grim. Also, I was getting older and I had this moment of genuine… I don’t know, epiphany, or something, where I was like, ‘Maybe I’ve missed my window. Maybe the window for me having any sort of big success has gone,’” he recalled of that period, which eventually led him to seek help from a therapist who helped him see things differently.

In the end, Goldstein found the success he had long sought after turning 40. Yet for him, success seems less about fame and awards than about being able to keep doing what he loves without worrying about whether anyone is watching or how he will pay the bills. Entertainment industry outlets estimate his net worth at around $10 million, following a significant pay rise between the first and fourth seasons of Ted Lasso.

“I don’t care about being famous. If my life is what I have at the moment, then I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he told Men’s Health. He may not be “every fucking where,” but he is exactly where he wants to be.

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