Asked by an Australian journalist what it was like to win a Tony Award, he said "it was like winning a thousand Gold Logies at the same time". Humphries died following complications from hip surgery at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 22 April 2023. Tributes to Humphries were given by members of the British royal family including Charles III and Sarah, Duchess of York, and by Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan.

Barry Humphries obituary: Entertainer's outrageous caricatures Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson took the one-man show to new heights".His early home life set the pattern for his eventual stage career; his father in particular spent little time with him and Humphries spent hours playing at dressing-up in the back garden. During this time, he was a private in the Melbourne University Regiment, [7] serving a period of national service in the Citizens Military Force of the Australian Army. Because Barry Humphries deliberately furnished would-be biographers with whimsical fictions and blatant mystifications, the true details of his life are among the best-kept secrets of our time. Humphries' past is a bombed and cratered landscape, except for his youth which stands evergreen in its quirky, vanishing details. In 2003, Humphries voiced the shark Bruce in the Pixar animated film Finding Nemo, using an exaggerated baritone Australian accent.

Since his success on the Broadway stage in 1999, Barry Humphries has been in perpetual motion performing throughout the United States. He recorded Sowerberry's feature number "That's Your Funeral" for the original London cast album (released on Decca Records) and reprised the role when the production moved to Broadway in 1963. Humphries' first major break on the British stage came when he was cast in the role of the undertaker Mr Sowerberry for the original 1960 London stage production of Oliver!However, the song "That's Your Funeral" was omitted from the RCA Victor original Broadway cast album so Humphries is not heard at all on it.

His status as 'a dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer' was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the failure of his first marriage and was a contributing factor to the collapse of the second. Humphries responded by becoming a voracious reader, a collector of rare books, a painter, a theatre fan and a surrealist. He finally broke through to widespread critical and audience acclaim in Britain with his 1976 London production Housewife, Superstar! Humphries emceed a program of Weimar Republic cabaret songs performed by chanteuse Meow Meow and accompanied by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in July–August 2016 [73] and then by the Aurora Orchestra in July 2018.His next show was Isn't It Pathetic at His Age (1978), and, like many of his shows, the title derives from the sarcastic remarks his mother often made when she took Humphries to the theatre to see superannuated overseas actors touring in Australia during his youth.