Hnatiw · Public domain

Christopher Guest co-wrote and starred in This Is Spinal Tap (1984), then spent the next three decades refining the mockumentary format he helped invent — Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind — assembling a repertory cast of improvising comic actors around ordinary, faintly absurd American subcultures. He also holds a hereditary British peerage as the 5th Baron Haden-Guest and sat in the House of Lords until the 1999 reforms ended hereditary seats.