NEW YORK -- Borat is dead.

Sacha Baron Cohen told The Daily Telegraph that he's retiring the clueless Kazakh journalist, as well as one of his other alter egos, aspiring rapper Ali G.

"When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," the 36-year-old actor-comedian says in the British newspaper's Friday edition.

"It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really."

Baron Cohen brought Borat Sagdiyev -- an anti-Semitic buffoon in search of Pamela Anderson -- to the masses last year with his smash comedy, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The character first emerged on "Da Ali G Show," which was broadcast in the U.S. on HBO.

"It's much easier for me to be in character and it's a lot more fun," he says. "If I'd done the entire promotional campaign for (the 'Borat' movie) as myself it wouldn't have developed in the same way."

Baron Cohen can be seen as a singing barber in Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd," co-starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. He is also finishing work on his next project, which features Bruno, the gay, Austrian fashion reporter who also made his first appearance on "Da Ali G Show."

Baron Cohen's spokesman did not immediately return The Associated Press' phone and e-mail messages seeking comment on the "deaths" of Borat and Ali G.

Additional Resource:

• The Daily Telegraph