British Actors I'd Love to Work With
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An actor since the age of 14, Bernard Cribbins had become a major star on the London stage by his mid-20s, but it was another ten years before he became a national star by his success in film comedies and with a string of hit records. He appeared in several of the "Carry On" series, and also achieved a great degree of success doing voiceovers for cartoons and TV commercials.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.- Actor
- Writer
One of Britain's most recognizable (and most larger-than-life) character actors, Tom Baker is best known for his record-setting seven-year stint as the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963). He was born in 1934 in Liverpool, to Mary Jane (Fleming) and John Stewart Baker. His father was of English and Scottish descent, while his mother's family was originally from Ireland. Tom, along with his younger sister, Lulu, and younger brother, John, was raised in a poor Catholic community by his mother, a house-cleaner and barmaid, who was a devout Catholic, and his father, a sailor, who was rarely at home.
At age fifteen, Baker left school to become a monk with the Brothers of Ploermel on the island of Jersey. Six years later, he abandoned the monastic life and performed his National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps., where he became interested in acting. Baker then served on the Queen Mary for seven months as a sailor in the Merchant Navy before attending Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in Kent, England, on scholarship.
Baker acted in repertory theaters around Britain until the late 1960s when he joined up with the National Theatre, where he performed with such respected actors as Maggie Smith, Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier, who helped him get his first prominent film role as Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). His performance in this film earned him two Golden Globe Award nominations, one for best actor in a supporting role and another for best new star of the year. A couple of years earlier, Baker had made his theatrical film debut in The Winter's Tale (1967).
Despite appearances in a spate of films, including The Canterbury Tales (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and The Mutations (1974), Baker found himself in a career lull and working as a labourer at a building site. However, the BBC's Head of Serials, William Slater, who had directed Baker in BBC Play of the Month (1965), recommended him to producer Barry Letts, who was looking for a replacement for Jon Pertwee as the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963). Baker's performance in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) convinced Letts that he was right for it. It brought Baker international fame and popularity. He played the role for seven years, longer than any actor before or since.
After leaving Doctor Who (1963) in 1981, Baker returned to theatre and made occasional television and film appearances, playing Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982), Puddleglum in The Chronicles of Narnia story The Silver Chair (1990) and Hallvarth, Clan Leader of the Hunter Elves, in Dungeons & Dragons (2000).- Actress
- Music Department
- Director
Dame Judi Dench was born Judith Olivia Dench in York, England, to Eleanora Olive (Jones), who was from Dublin, Ireland, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor from Dorset, England. She attended Mount School in York, and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and at Old Vic Theatre. She is a ten-time BAFTA winner including Best Actress in a Comedy Series for A Fine Romance (1981) in which she appeared with her husband, Michael Williams, and Best Supporting Actress in A Handful of Dust (1988) and A Room with a View (1985). She received an ACE award for her performance in the television series Mr. and Mrs. Edgehill (1985). She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970, a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1988 and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2005.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor Robert Stephens and to playwright Beverley Cross. Her marriage to Stephens ended in divorce in 1974. She was married to Cross until his death in 1999. She had two sons with Stephens, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens who are also actors.
Maggie Smith's career began at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s. She made her film debut in 1956 as one of the party guests in Child in the House (1956). She has since performed in over sixty films and television series with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: Othello (1965) with Laurence Olivier, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978) with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, A Room with a View (1985), Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent, Franco Zeffirelli's Tea with Mussolini (1999) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Cher and Gosford Park (2001) with Kristin Scott Thomas and Clive Owen, directed by Robert Altman. Maggie Smith has also been nominated for an Oscar six times and won twice, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978).
Smith later appeared in the very successful 'Harry Potter' franchise as the formidable Professor McGonagall as well as in Julian Fellowes' ITV drama series, Downton Abbey (2010) (2010-2011) as the Dowager Countess of Grantham.- Actor
- Director
- Art Department
Boisterous British actor Brian Blessed is known for his hearty, king-sized portrayals on film and television. A giant of a man accompanied by an eloquent wit and booming, operatic voice, Brian was born in 1936 and grew up in the mining village of Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire. His father was a miner who wanted a better life for his son; Brian lost three uncles in the pit. At a young age, he displayed an acute talent for acting in school productions, but also had a penchant for boxing, a direction that would be short-lived.
Working various blue-collar jobs from undertaker's assistant to plasterer, Brian managed to attend the Bristol Old Vic and was off and running. He has lent his musical talents to several productions - from playing "Old Deuteronomy" in "Cats" to "The Baron" in the more recent "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". In the 1970s, he began appearing more and more on-camera with both classical and contemporary performances. In costumed television movies, he has played "Porthos" in The Three Musketeers (1966) and The Further Adventures of the Musketeers (1967), "Augustus" in I, Claudius (1976), and "Long John Silver" in Return to Treasure Island (1986) and has been a part of various reenactments including Catherine the Great (1995), Lady Chatterley (1993), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983) and Kidnapped (1995).
On film, he has appeared in robust support in several William Shakespeare adaptations, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Hamlet (1996), Macbeth (1997) and the title role in King Lear (1999), which he also directed.
More recently, he appeared in Oliver Stone's epic-scale Alexander (2004) and in Kenneth Branagh's film version of William Shakespeare's As You Like It (2006).
In recent years, the octogenarian has been heard more than seen with voice work in video games, documentaries and such animated TV programs as Kika & Bob (2007) (as Bob); The Amazing World of Gumball (2011) (as Santa Claus); Wizards vs. Aliens (2012) (as the Necross King); Henry Hugglemonster (2013) (as Eduardo Enormomonster); and Peppa Pig (2004) as Grampy Rabbit.
He is married to British actress Hildegard Neil, who made an appearance with him in Macbeth (1997).- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Preeminent British classical actor of the first post-Olivier generation, Derek Jacobi was knighted in 1994 for his services to the theatre, and, in fact, is only the second to enjoy the honor of holding TWO knighthoods, Danish and English (Olivier was the other). Modest and unassuming in nature, Jacobi's firm place in theatre history centers around his fearless display of his characters' more unappealing aspects, their great flaws, eccentricities and, more often than not, their primal torment.
Jacobi was born in Leytonstone, London, England, the only child of Alfred George Jacobi, a department store manager, and Daisy Gertrude (Masters) Jacobi, a secretary. His paternal great-grandfather was German (from Hoxter, Germany). His interest in drama began while quite young. He made his debut at age six in the local library drama group production of "The Prince and the Swineherd" in which he appeared as both the title characters. In his teens he attended Leyton County High School and eventually joined the school's drama club ("The Players of Leyton").
Derek portrayed Hamlet at the English National Youth Theatre prior to receiving his high school diploma, and earned a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where he initially studied history before focusing completely on the stage. A standout role as Edward II at Cambridge led to an invite by the Birmingham Repertory in 1960 following college graduation. He made an immediate impression wherein his Henry VIII (both in 1960) just happened to catch the interest of Olivier himself, who took him the talented actor under his wing. Derek became one of the eight founding members of Olivier's National Theatre Company and gradually rose in stature with performances in "The Royal Hunt of the Sun," "Othello" (as Cassio) and in "Hay Fever", among others. He also made appearances at the Chichester Festival and the Old Vic.
It was Olivier who provided Derek his film debut, recreating his stage role of Cassio in Olivier's acclaimed cinematic version of Othello (1965). Olivier subsequently cast Derek in his own filmed presentation of Chekhov's Three Sisters (1970). On TV Derek was in celebrated company playing Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (1967) alongside Maggie Smith and then-husband Robert Stephens; Derek had played the role earlier at the Chichester Festival in 1965. After eight eventful years at the National Theatre, which included such sterling roles as Touchstone in "As You Like It", Jacobi left the company in 1971 in order to attract other mediums. He continued his dominance on stage as Ivanov, Richard III, Pericles and Orestes (in "Electra"), but his huge breakthrough would occur on TV. Coming into his own with quality support work in Man of Straw (1972), The Strauss Family (1972) and especially the series The Pallisers (1974) in which he played the ineffectual Lord Fawn, Derek's magnificence was presented front and center in the epic BBC series I, Claudius (1976). His stammering, weak-minded Emperor Claudius was considered a work of genius and won, among other honors, the BAFTA award.
Although he was accomplished in The Day of the Jackal (1973) and The Odessa File (1974), films would place a distant third throughout his career. Stage and TV, however, would continue to illustrate his classical icon status. Derek took his Hamlet on a successful world tour throughout England, Egypt, Sweden, Australia, Japan and China; in some of the afore-mentioned countries he was the first actor to perform the role in English. TV audiences relished his performances as Richard II (1978) and, of course Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1980).
After making his Broadway bow in "The Suicide" in 1980, Derek suffered from an alarming two-year spell of stage fright. He returned, however, and toured as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company (1982-1985) with award-winning results. During this period he collected Broadway's Tony Award for his Benedick in "Much Ado about Nothing"; earned the coveted Olivier, Drama League and Helen Hayes awards for his Cyrano de Bergerac; and earned equal acclaim for his Prospero in "The Tempest" and Peer Gynt. In 1986, he finally made his West End debut in "Breaking the Code" for which he won another Helen Hayes trophy; the play was then brought to Broadway.
For the rest of the 80s and 90s, he laid stage claim to such historical figures as Lord Byron, Edmund Kean and Thomas Becket. On TV he found resounding success (and an Emmy nomination) as Adolf Hitler in Inside the Third Reich (1982), and finally took home the coveted Emmy opposite Anthony Hopkins in the WWII drama The Tenth Man (1988). He won a second Emmy in an unlikely fashion by spoofing his classical prowess on an episode of "Frasier" (his first guest performance on American TV), in which he played the unsubtle and resoundingly bad Shakespearean actor Jackson Hedley.
Kenneth Branagh was greatly influenced by mentor Jacobi and their own association would include Branagh's films Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), and Hamlet (1996), the latter playing Claudius to Branagh's Great Dane. Derek also directed Branagh in the actor's Renaissance Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". In the 1990s Derek returned to the Chichester Festival, this time as artistic director, and made a fine showing in the title role of Uncle Vanya (1996).
More heralded work of late include profound portrayals of the anguished titular painter in Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), the role of Gracchus in the popular, Oscar-winning film Gladiator (2000), and sterling performances in such films as Two Men Went to War (2002), Bye Bye Blackbird (2005), The Riddle (2007), Endgame (2009), The King's Speech (2010), Jail Caesar (2012), and as the King in Cinderella (2015). Continuing to mesmerize on the stage, he has turned in superb performances in "Uncle Vanya" (2000), Friedrich Schiller's "Don Carlos" (2005), _A Voyage 'Round My Father (2006), "Twelfth Night" (2009) and the title role in "King Lear" (2010). On the British TV series front, he has commanded more recent attention in the title role of a crusading monk in the mystery series Mystery!: Cadfael (1994), as Lord Pirrie in Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012), as Alan in Last Tango in Halifax (2012), and as Stuart Bixby in Vicious (2013).
He and his life-time companion of three decades, Richard Clifford, filed as domestic partners in England in 2006. Clifford, a fine classical actor and producer in his own right, has shared movie time with Jacobi in Little Dorrit (1987), Henry V (1989), and the TV version of Cyrano de Bergerac (1985).- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery Lois (Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer and lay preacher. He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his older sister, Jean, to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theatre, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare, in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre.
When Ian was of age to begin attending school, he made sure to get roles in all of the productions. At Bolton School in particular, he developed his skills early on. Indeed, his first role in a Shakespearian play was at Bolton, as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night". Ian soon began attending Stratford-upon-Avon theatre festivals, where he saw the greats perform: Laurence Olivier, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Paul Robeson. He continued his education in English Drama, but soon it fell by the wayside as he concentrated more and more on performing. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and began his career in earnest.
McKellen began working in theatre over the next few years. Very few people knew of Ian's homosexuality; he saw no reason to go public, nor had he told his family. They did not seem interested in the subject and so he saw no reason to bring it up. In 1988, Ian publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program, while discussing Margaret Thatcher's "Section 28" legislation, which made the promotion of homosexuality as a family relationship by local authorities an offense. It was reason enough for McKellen to take a stand. He has been active in the gay rights movement ever since.
Ian resides in Limehouse, where he has also lived with his former long-time partner Sean Mathias. The two men have also worked together on the film Bent (1997) as well as in exquisite stage productions. To this day, McKellen works mostly in theatre, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for his efforts in the arts. However, he has managed to make several quite successful forays into film. He has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare's works including his well received Richard III (1995), and in a variety of other movies. However, it has only been recently that his star has finally begun to shine in the eyes of North American audiences. Roles in various films, Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Gods and Monsters (1998), riveted audiences. The latter, in particular, created a sensation in Hollywood, and McKellen's role garnered him several of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod. McKellen, as he continues to work extensively on stage, he always keeps in 'solidifying' his 'role' as Laurence Olivier's worthy 'successor' in the best sense too, such as King Lear (2008) / King Lear (2008) directed by Trevor Nunn and in a range of other staggering performances full of generously euphoric delight that have included "Peter Pan" and Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", as well as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" (National Theatre Live: No Man's Land (2016)), both in acclaimed productions brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias.
McKellen found mainstream success with his performance as Magneto in X-Men (2000) and its sequels. His largest mark on the big screen may be as Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which he reprised in "The Hobbit" trilogy. He also reprised the role of 'King Lear' with new artistic perspectives in National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018) offering an invaluable mesmerizing experience as a natural force of stage - and screen - of infinite generosity through his unsurpassable interpretation of the titanically vulnerable king.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sir Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England, to Gladys (Barrowclough), a textile worker and weaver, and Alfred Stewart, who was in the army. He was a member of various local drama groups from about age 12. He left school at age 15 to work as a junior reporter on a local paper; he quit when his editor told him he was spending too much time at the theatre and not enough working. Stewart spent a year as a furniture salesman, saving cash to attend drama school. He was accepted by Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 1957.
He made his professional debut in 1959 in the repertory theatre in Lincoln; he worked at the Manchester Library Theatre and a tour around the world with the Old Vic Company followed in the early 1960s. Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, to begin his 27-year association. Following a spell with the Royal National Theatre in the mid 1980s, he went to Los Angeles, California to star on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), which ran from 1987-1994, playing the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. After the series ended, Stewart reprised his role for a string of successful Star Trek films: Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). Stewart continues to work on the stage and in various films. He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Queen's New Year's Honours List for his services to drama.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Sir Michael Gambon was born in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland, to Mary (Hoare), a seamstress, and Edward Gambon, an engineer. After joining the National Theatre, under the Artistic Directorship of Sir Laurence Olivier, Gambon went on to appear in a number of leading roles in plays written by Alan Ayckbourn. His career was catapulted in 1980 when he took the lead role in John Dexter's production of "Galileo". Since then, Gambon has regularly appeared at the Royal National Theatre and the RSC. Roles include, King Lear, Othello, Mark Anthony and Volpone. He was described by the late Sir Ralph Richardson as being "The Great Gambon" and he is now considered to be one of the British theatre's leading lights. He was made a CBE in 1992.- Actor
- Location Management
- Soundtrack
David Bradley was born on 17 April 1942 in York, Yorkshire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for The World's End (2013), Hot Fuzz (2007) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). He has been married to Rosanna Bradley since 1978. They have three children.- Actor
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Sylvester McCoy was born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith on 20 August 1943, the only child of Molly Sheridan and Percy James Kent-Smith, a couple living in Dunoon, Scotland. His mother was Irish. Percy James Kent-Smith was killed in the Second World War a couple of months before his son was born, and he was brought up by his mother, his grandmother (Mary Sheridan), and his aunts. He attended St Muns Primary School in Dunoon. The headmistress, Rosie O'Grady, was keen that her young charges obtain decent jobs upon leaving the school and so organized regular talks from people in all manner of professions.
McCoy expressed an interest in every job, and as a result eventually found himself given an afternoon off school to go to see a local priest about entering the priesthood. He left school, joined Blairs College, a Catholic seminary in Aberdeen, and between the ages of twelve and sixteen trained to be a priest. At Blairs College, he realized that there was more to life than could be found in Dunoon and discovered classical music and history, which fascinated him. He eventually decided to become a monk and applied to join a Dominican order, but his application was rejected as he was too young. He returned to school and soon discovered the delights of the opposite sex in the form of fellow students and determined he didn't want to be a priest or a monk after all.
On finishing his education he took a holiday down to London, from which he never returned. McCoy approached a youth employment center looking for a job and impressed by the fact that he had attended a grammar school, they instantly found him a job in the City working for an insurance company. He trained in this job and stayed there until he was 27 before deciding that it wasn't really for him. With the help of a cook at London's Roundhouse Theatre, McCoy gained a job there selling tickets and keeping the books in the box office.
McCoy joined the Ken Campbell Roadshow. Along with Bob Hoskins, Jane Wood, and Dave Hill, he would start performing a range of plays with the umbrella theme of "modern myths". McCoy found himself in a double-act with Hoskins. After Hoskins left, and being booked at a circus, director Ken Campbell improvised a circus-based act about a fictitious stuntman called Sylvester McCoy and thought it would be amusing if the program stated that this character was played by "Sylvester McCoy". While at the Royal Court Theatre, one of the critics missed the joke and assumed that Sylvester McCoy was a real person. McCoy liked the irony of this and adopted the name of his stage identity. During one of their UK engagements, the Roadshow team was invited up by Joan Littlewood, who was directing a production of "The Hostage", before the performance of her play. This led McCoy to bona fide theater, and he was subsequently invited to appear in numerous plays and musicals.
McCoy was starring at the National Theatre in "The Pied Piper", a play written especially for him, when he learned that the BBC was looking for a new lead actor to replace Colin Baker, who had been unceremoniously dumped from Doctor Who (1963) on the orders of Michael Grade. McCoy won the role as the Seventh Doctor despite reservations from Grade and Head of Drama Jonathan Powell, who were by this time monitoring producer John Nathan-Turner's decision-making very closely. McCoy's first season took the slightly pantomimic style of Baker's final season, Trial of a Time Lord, even further and received a very dubious reception from the press and fans. Nathan-Turner put McCoy in a pullover covered in question marks, which McCoy later admitted he didn't like.
By the time of McCoy's second season, the new script editor, Andrew Cartmel, was trying to make the series darker and more complex. In the third season, his costume was changed from a fawn jacket and paisley scarf to a dark brown jacket and an altogether more muted and subdued image, but the pullover remained. Despite forming a close bond with co-star Sophie Aldred and the general standard of the stories rising again towards the end, the series was obviously starved of funds and ratings were fairly poor throughout the McCoy era, with the series being trounced by ITV's Coronation Street (1960). The BBC's opinion of Doctor Who (1963) was that it was an embarrassment. In 1989, the new series head, Peter Cregeen, pulled the plug.
After Doctor Who (1963) McCoy worked extensively in theater and on television. In theater he appeared in "The Government Inspector" twice in tours during 1993 and 1994, and in between these he starred as the Narrator, Thomas Marvel, in the stage version of H.G. Wells's "The Invisible Man". In 1995, he starred in Zorro: The Musical".
On television, his credits include Frank Stubbs Promotes (1993) and Rab C. Nesbitt (1988). He also created the character of Crud in the cult television series Ghoul Lashed for Sky TV. In 1996, he was contracted to reprise his role as the Doctor, handing over to an eighth incarnation of the Time Lord in the earthly form of his friend Paul McGann. Also in 1996, McCoy devised and presented Reeltime Pictures' I Was a 'Doctor Who' Monster (1996), a special video tribute to the men and women who had played the monsters of Doctor Who (1963).- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor, of Gujarati Indian descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary (Goodman), was an English actress. Ben began to act in stage plays during the 1960s. He soon became a successful stage actor, and also began to have roles in films and television. His birth name was Krishna Bhanji, but he changed his name to "Ben Kingsley" soon after gaining fame as a stage actor, fearing that a foreign name could hamper his acting career.
Kingsley first earned international fame for his performance in the drama movie Gandhi (1982). His performance as Mohandas K. Gandhi earned him international fame. He won many awards - including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He also won Golden Globe, BAFTA and London Film Critics' Circle Awards. After acting in Gandhi (1982), Ben was recognized as one of the finest British actors.
After his international fame for appearing in Gandhi (1982), Kingsley appeared in many other famous movies. His success as an actor continued. His performance as Itzhak Stern in the drama movie Schindler's List (1993) earned him a BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor. Schindler's List (1993) won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. During the late 1990s, Kingsley acted in many successful movies. He played Sweeney Todd in the television movie The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1997), for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. His other notable role was as Otto Frank in the television movie Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001), for which he won the Screen Actors' Guild Award.
In 2002, Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Years Honours for his services to drama. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment. That same year, he also received the Fellowship Award at the Asian Awards in London, England.- Ian McDiarmid was born on August 11, 1944 in Carnoustie, Tayside, Scotland. He studied for a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of St. Andrews, but eventually found that his calling was in theatre. He went to the Royal Academy in Glasgow, where he received the prestigious gold medal for his work. He now has a highly successful career as a theatre director, and from 1990 until his retirement in 2001, was Joint Artistic Director of London's Almeida Theatre in Islington. He and his co-director Jonathan Kent revived the Almeida and persuaded many Hollywood stars including Kevin Spacey, Ralph Fiennes and Anna Friel to tread the boards in their humble theatre. They won the coveted London Evening Standard Award in 1998 for their efforts. McDiarmid is also well known for his film and television appearances, and is perhaps most famous for his chilling performance as Emperor Palpatine in George Lucas's Star Wars films.
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At a consistently lean 6' 2", green-eyed Timothy Dalton may very well be one of the last of the dying breed of swashbuckling, classically trained Shakespearean actors who have forged simultaneous successful careers in theater, television and film. He has been comparison-shopped roundly for stepping into roles played by other actors, first following Sir Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1970), in Scarlett (1994).
Undaunted and good-natured, he has always stated that he likes the risk of challenges. He was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the oldest of five children of Dorothy (Scholes) and Peter Dalton-Leggett. His father was stationed in Colwyn Bay during World War II, and moved the family to Manchester in the late 1940s, where he worked in advertising and raised the growing Dalton family, in an upper-class neighbourhood outside of Belper, Derbyshire. Timothy was enrolled in a school for bright children, where he excelled in sports and was interested in the sciences. He was fascinated with acting from a young age, perhaps due to the fact that both his grandfathers were vaudevillians, but it was when he saw a performance of "Macbeth" at age 16 that his destiny was clinched.
After leaving Herbert Strutt Grammar School at age 16, he toured as a leading member of Michael Croft's National Youth Theater. Between 1964-66, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Just before completing his two years, he quit and joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, playing the lead in many productions under the direction of Peter Dews while at the same time then as James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), and even more brutally, recently, as Rhett Butler turning professional. Dalton later said of RADA in an interview with "Seventeen" magazine (December 1970), "It took a year to undo the psychological damage that was caused by the oppressive teachers.".
His talent and classic good looks immediately landed him professional work in television, guest-starring on an episode of the short-lived series, Judge Dee (1969), and as a regular on the 14-episode series Sat'day While Sunday (1967) with the young Malcolm McDowell. In late 1967, Peter O'Toole recommended him for the role of the young King Philip of France in The Lion in Winter (1968) (coincidentally, this was also Anthony Hopkins' big break). The following year, he starred in the Italian film Giuochi particolari (1970) with Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi, although his voice was dubbed into Italian by another actor. Dalton also mixed in a healthy dose of BBC work during this time, including The Three Princes (1968), Five Finger Exercise (1970) and Candida (1973). Also during this time, he was approached and tested for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) which he turned down, feeling he was too young for the role. His next film was another costume drama, Cromwell (1970), working with director Ken Hughes, with whom he later made his first American film, Sextette (1977). He followed Cromwell (1970) with Wuthering Heights (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971).
He was already developing a pattern in his films that would follow him throughout his career: costume dramas where he played royalty, which he had done in three of his first four films (and ridden horses in three, and raised a sword in two). In 1972, he was contracted to play a role in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). However, he was replaced at the last moment. Dalton sued the company and won, but the film went on without him. From the early to mid-1970s, he decided to further hone his skills by going back into the theater full time. He signed on with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Prospect Theatre Company (PTC), and toured the world with both, playing the leads in "Romeo and Juliet", "King Lear", "Henry V", "Love's Labours Lost" and "Henry IV" - parts 1 and 2.
In 1975, he returned to movies in the British/Austrian production of The Executioner (1975). It was followed in 1976 by the Spanish religious historical film about the inquisition, El hombre que supo amar (1976), which was never widely released. After this, he took another break from film, mixing in a healthy dose of theater, returning for his first American film, Sextette (1977), and the lengthy miniseries Centennial (1978), his first American television appearance, in which Lynn Redgrave played his wife. Because of his broad exposure to American audiences in this series, he began to get more frequent film and television work in the United States, including the Charlie's Angels (1976) episode "Fallen Angel" -- which, ironically, had several references to his character being like James Bond -- and the TV movie The Flame Is Love (1979). Although he did a few features, including playing Vanessa Redgrave's husband in Agatha (1979), most of his work until 1985 consisted of TV movies and miniseries. He played Prince Barin in the science fiction classic Flash Gordon (1980). He followed this with a small film, Chanel Solitaire (1981) and also filmed a staged production of Antony and Cleopatra (1984) opposite Lynn Redgrave, with Anthony Geary, as well as Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig of the original Star Trek (1966) series.
The years 1983-1987 have so far been the most prolific of his career. In 1983, he starred as Rochester in what he considers one of his best works, the popular BBC miniseries Jane Eyre (1983). Also, during this time, Roger Moore was considering leaving Bond, and Dalton was again approached, but due to his full schedule, he had to decline. In 1984, he did one of his many narrations in the Faerie Tale Theatre (1982) production of The Emperor's New Clothes (1987). That same year also saw him in the Hallmark Hall of Fame piece The Master of Ballantrae (1984) opposite Michael York and Richard Thomas, and another miniseries, Mistral's Daughter (1984), opposite Stefanie Powers and Stacy Keach. The next year was also a very busy one. He starred in another miniseries, Sins (1986), playing the brother of Joan Collins, and also starred in and narrated the four-hour miniseries Florence Nightingale (1985), opposite Jaclyn Smith. He also starred in The Doctor and the Devils (1985) as Dr. Thomas Rock, with Stephen Rea, Jonathan Pryce and Patrick Stewart.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Dalton narrated many nature documentaries, most notably several episodes of the UK series Wildlife Chronicles (1987). In the spring of 1986, he teamed with Vanessa Redgrave for another revival of a Shakespeare production, The Taming of the Shrew (1988) and his interpretation of Petrucchio received uniformly high praise. Simultaneously, the world was playing a guessing game as to who would succeed Roger Moore as James Bond. Dalton was approached but was committed to the theater, and so Pierce Brosnan was offered the role. When Brosnan was unable to get out of his Remington Steele (1982) contract at the last minute, Dalton was again approached. Able now to work it into his tight schedule, he agreed. Although his first outing as Bond, The Living Daylights (1987), did reasonably well at the box-office, Licence to Kill (1989) suffered from a lack of marketing that appeared to harm its chances of big box-office success. However, Dalton's interpretation of "Bond" in this film received critical acclaim in some quarters as being the closest to author Ian Fleming's literary "Bond". Back in the theater, he teamed again with Vanessa Redgrave for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's seldom performed play, "A Touch of the Poet", which is considered by some to be his and Redgrave's finest professional collaboration. Although there were talks of bringing the play to Broadway, this never materialized.
Following Licence to Kill (1989), he immediately returned to one of his strengths, costume drama, in The King's Whore (1990). It was followed by his excellent performance in the Disney action adventure The Rocketeer (1991), where he played an Errol Flynn type Nazi agent. In August 1991, he teamed with Whoopi Goldberg for the first biracial interpretation of "Love Letters" for the final sold-out performances of the play in Los Angeles. When he had signed on to do Bond, it was for three pictures, but the rights to the Bond films became entangled in lengthy litigation, delaying production of the third. During this wait, he was set to star in the title role of another historical epic, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992). However, the film was doomed from the start due to the competition with the Gérard Depardieu "Columbus" picture, which was racked with its own problems. When the director was replaced, Dalton backed out and was followed by his co-star, Isabella Rossellini.
In 1992, he starred in the A&E production Framed (1992), which won a bronze medal in the 1993 New York Film Festival. The next year, he journeyed to northern Alaska and Minnesota to make a documentary on one of his favorite subjects, wolves. In the Company of Whales (1991) went on to win a silver medal in the 1994 New York Film Festival. He kept busy in television through 1993 and 1994. He made Red Eagle (1994), Scarlett (1994) and managed to squeeze in a guest appearance on Tales from the Crypt (1989) in the episode "Werewolf Concerto". In 1994, he took on the role of Rhett Butler in the eight-hour miniseries Scarlett (1994), produced by Robert Halmi Sr. for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. In April of that year, believing he needed to move on to fresh challenges, he officially resigned the role of James Bond, a move which was much regretted by the producers, though they understood his reasons. After two months of negotiations, the role went to Pierce Brosnan.
In September 1994, Dalton was called upon for two readings of "Peter and the Wolf" at the Hollywood Bowl. He played to full-capacity crowds. In November, Scarlett (1994) premiered and, though given only a lukewarm response by critics, it was a ratings success not only in the United States but all over the world, breaking records in many European countries. As always after a major work, Dalton again withdrew quietly and without fanfare to search for his next project, a small, personal film. In the summer of 1995, he journeyed to Canada to shoot Salt Water Moose (1996). The film was made by Canada's Norstar Entertainment and was sold to Halmi to be the first video release in his new line of Hallmark family films. It premiered on Showtime in June 1996.
During the spring of 1996, he made the IRA drama The Informant (1997) in Ireland and, in May, he traveled to Prague to shoot Passion's Way (1999), opposite Sela Ward. On February 7, 1997, the comedy The Beautician and the Beast (1997) co-starring Fran Drescher opened in the United States. He also gleefully parodied his swashbuckling/James Bond image in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) as a spy playing an actor playing a spy.
In 1995, Dalton began a relationship with Oksana Grigorieva which produced a child in 1997, Dalton's son Alexander. Over the following years, Dalton has been a caring and loving father of his son. Very much a private man, Dalton's pastimes include fishing, reading, jazz, opera, antique fairs and auctions and, of course, movies.- Penelope Wilton was born on 3 June 1946 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK. She is an actress, known for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Match Point (2005). She was previously married to Ian Holm and Daniel Massey.
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Charles Dance is an English actor, screenwriter, and film director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. Some of his most high-profile roles are Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones (2011), Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Sardo Numspa in The Golden Child (1986), Dr. Jonathan Clemens in Alien 3 (1992), Benedict in Last Action Hero (1993), the Master Vampire in Dracula Untold (2014), Lord Havelock Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal (2010), Alastair Denniston in The Imitation Game (2014) and William Randolph Hearst in Mank (2020).
He played the role of Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones (2011), based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin.
In 1989, he played Bond creator Ian Fleming in Anglia Television's drama biography.- Actor
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Jonathan Pryce was born on 1 June 1947 in Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for The Two Popes (2019), The Wife (2017) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). He has been married to Kate Fahy since April 2015. They have three children.- Actor
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One of England's most versatile character actors, Jim Broadbent was born on May 24, 1949, in Lincolnshire, the youngest son of furniture maker Roy Laverick Broadbent and sculptress Doreen "Dee" (Findlay) Broadbent. Jim attended a Quaker boarding school in Reading before successfully applying for a place at an art school. His heart was in acting, though, and he would later transfer to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Following his 1972 graduation, he began his professional career on the stage, performing with the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and as part of the National Theatre of Brent, a two-man troupe which he co-founded. In addition to his theatrical work, Broadbent did steady work on television, working for such directors as Mike Newell and Stephen Frears. Broadbent made his film debut in 1978 with a small part in Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout (1978). He went on to work with Frears again in The Hit (1984) and with Terry Gilliam in Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985), but it was through his collaboration with Mike Leigh that Broadbent first became known to an international film audience. In 1990 he starred in Leigh's Life Is Sweet (1990), a domestic comedy that cast him as a good-natured cook who dreams of running his own business. Broadbent gained further visibility the following year with substantial roles in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (1992) and Mike Newell's Enchanted April (1991), and he could subsequently be seen in such diverse fare as Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Widows' Peak (1994), Richard Loncraine's highly acclaimed adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III (1995) and Little Voice (1998), the last of which cast him as a seedy nightclub owner. Appearing primarily as a character actor in these films, Broadbent took center stage for Leigh's Topsy-Turvy (1999), imbuing the mercurial W.S. Gilbert with emotional complexity and comic poignancy. Jim's breakthrough year was 2001, as he starred in three critically and commercially successful films. Many would consider him the definitive supporting actor of that year. First he starred as Bridget's dad (Colin Jones) in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), which propelled Renée Zellweger to an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Next came the multiple Oscar-nominated film (including Best Picture) Moulin Rouge! (2001), for which he won a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA award for his scene-stealing performance as Harold Zidler. Lastly, came the small biopic Iris (2001), for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as devoted husband John Bayley to Judi Dench's Iris Murdoch, the British novelist who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. The film hit home with Jim, since his own mother had passed away from Alzheimer's in 1995.- Actor
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Bill Nighy is an award-winning British character actor. He was born William Francis Nighy on December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, England, to Catherine Josephine (Whittaker), a psychiatric nurse from Glasgow, and Alfred Martin Nighy, who was English-born and managed a garage in Croydon.
At school, he gained 'O'-levels in English Language and English Literature and enjoyed reading, particularly Ernest Hemingway. On leaving school he wanted to become a journalist but didn't have the required qualifications. He eventually went on to work as a messenger boy for the Field magazine. He stayed in Paris for a while because he wanted to write "the great novel", but he only managed to write the title. When he ran out of money, the British consul shipped him home.
Nighy wound up training at Guildford School of Dance and Drama in London, and has since then worked consistently in film, television, and on stage.
Nighy is perhaps best-known to international audiences for his memorable performance as washed-up pop singer Billy Mack in Love Actually (2003), which won him a BAFTA for best supporting actor. He has also made appearances in major franchises: he played vampire leader Viktor in Underworld (2003), Underworld: Evolution (2006) and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), did the performance capture and voice for Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), and made a brief appearance as Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010).
Nighy's recent film credits include roles in I Capture the Castle (2003), Shaun of the Dead (2004), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), The Constant Gardener (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Hot Fuzz (2007), Valkyrie (2008) and The Boat That Rocked (2009). He has also provided voice work for many animated movies in the past few years including Flushed Away (2006), Astro Boy (2009), Rango (2011) and Arthur Christmas (2011).
With supporting turns in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012) and Total Recall (2012), 2012 was a busy year for Nighy. There are no signs of slowing down either, as he next appeared in Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), About Time (2013), and I, Frankenstein (2014).
Nighy has also had an active career on the small screen, beginning with Agony (1979), and his first widely-recognized role was in 1991 mini-series The Men's Room (1991). He has also made a habit of working on television with Harry Potter director David Yates: projects together include State of Play (2003), The Young Visiters (2003), The Girl in the Café (2005) and Page Eight (2011). Nighy won a Golden Globe for his performance in Gideon's Daughter (2005).
Nighy actually began his career on the stage, and has earned acclaim for his work in numerous plays including "The Vertical Hour," "Pravda". "A Map of the World", Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1993, and David Hare's Skylight. He received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance in 2001 play "Blue/Orange."
Bill's partner was actress Diana Quick (he asked her to marry him but she said: "don't ask me again"; he called her his wife because anything else would have been too difficult). They have a daughter, Mary Nighy, who is studying at university and contemplating an acting career. She has already begun to appear on TV dramas and radio programs.- Actor
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Anthony Stewart Head was born on February 20, 1954 in Camden Town, north London, England. He grew up in Hampton, near Richmond upon Thames in London. He's the youngest son of Seafield Head (a documentary filmmaker) and Helen Shingler (an actress). He is the younger brother of musician/actor Murray Head who originated the role of Judas on the original album of 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. His long term partner is former theatre administrator Sarah Fisher who he met when he was 28, and they are the parents of actresses Emily Head and Daisy Head. Besides acting, Head takes after his brother in being an accomplished singer, and they have appeared in many of the same productions, although never at the same time. In 1983, he was in a band named "Two Way". The band released a 45 single with three songs, produced by Richard Dodd and Ron Roker. Head's other skills are horse riding, swimming, scuba diving, piano, guitar and stage fighting.- Actor
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Timothy Leonard Spall is an award-winning classical character actor who was born on February 27, 1957, and raised in London. The son of blue-collar parents, Joseph L. Spall, a postal worker, and Sylvia R. (Leonard), a hairdresser, his interest in acting happened early and Spall auditioned and earned a spot with the National Youth Theatre.
The young actor showed great promise at RADA where he portrayed the title roles in "Macbeth" and "Othello." In 1979 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and stayed for approximately two years performing in such plays as "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Cymbeline," "The Three Sisters," "Nicholas Nickleby" and "The Knight of the Burning Pestle." With other rep companies, he appeared in, among others, "The Merchant" and "St. Joan."
Making his minor debut in a filmed version of the play The Life Story of Baal (1978), Tim went on to play featured roles in offbeat films such as Quadrophenia (1979), Remembrance (1982), The Missionary (1982), The Bride (1985), Body Contact (1987), Crusoe (1988), To Kill A Priest (1988), Dream Demon (1988) and 1871 (1990)
In the 1990's, Timothy surged forward largely through his association with prolific writer/director Mike Leigh, appearing in a number of his award-winning, working-class features. Those included his doomed chef Aubrey in Life Is Sweet (1990); brother/uncle Maurice in Secrets & Lies (1996) (BAFTA Award nomination); the vulnerable performer Richard Temple in the Gilbert & Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy (1999) (another BAFTA nomination); and the benign taxi driver Phil in All or Nothing (2002). He also worked for other noted directors including Ken Russell in Gothic (1986), Clint Eastwood in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), Bernardo Bertolucci in The Sheltering Sky (1990), and Kenneth Branagh in Hamlet (1996) (as Rosenkrantz).
Tim impressed on the small screen as well during this time, accentuated by his starring work on series TV as the luckless Frank Stubbs Promotes (1993) as well as the comedies Nice Day at the Office (1994) and Outside Edge (1994), and his BAFTA-nominated TV roles in Our Mutual Friend (1998), Shooting the Past (1999) and Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise (2001).
A battle with myeloid leukemia sharply curtailed Tim's momentum for a time, but he returned healthy into the millennium in superb lead and support form to create arguably his most hissable cinematic character. As the cowardly, half-blooded wizard Peter Pettigrew, Tim inhabited the role in several of the nine "Harry Potter" blockbusters from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). He also earned superb notices as: one of the charitable Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby (2002); gullible banker Mr. Poe in the wild Jim Carrey adventure comedy A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); humorous Simon Graham in the Tom Cruise starrer The Last Samurai (2003); evil queen henchman Nathaniel in the delightful Disney film Enchanted (2007); the villainous Beadle in the dark musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007); the over-anxious lawyer starring role in the family dramedy Reuniting the Rubins (2010); Sir Winston Churchill in The King's Speech (2010); werewolf hunter Sid in the horror comedy Love Bite (2012); eccentric painter J.M.W. Turner portrait in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner (2014) (Cannes, London Critics Circle, New York Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics winner); the co-lead with Juno Temple in the social drama Away (2016); legal combatant David Irving in the Holocaust-themed Denial (2016); part of an upper-class couple (opposite Kristin Scott Thomas in the dark social comedy The Party (2017); a syndicated boss in The Corrupted (2019); and as artist L.S. Lowry opposite Vanessa Redgrave playing his mother in the biopic Mrs Lowry & Son (2019).
Tim's more recent notable TV outings have included his Fagin in the mini-series version of the Dickens classic Oliver Twist (2007), the title role in the TV-movie The Fattest Man in Britain (2009), and as Eddie in the series The Street (2006), Lord Blandings in the comedy Blandings (2013) and Lord Wallington in the dramatic mini-series Summer of Rockets (2019).
The father of three children, one of his children, Rafe Spall, is a prolific actor in his own right.- Actor
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Writer, actor, comedian, doer of good works, excellent good friend to the famous and not, Fry lives in his London SW1 flat and his Norfolk house when not traveling. Famous for his public declaration of celibacy in the "Tatler" back in the 1980s, Emma Thompson has characterised her friend as "90 percent gay, 10 percent other."
Stephen Fry was born in Hampstead, London, to Marianne Eve (Newman) and Alan Fry, a physicist and inventor. His maternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, while his father's family was of English background. He grew up in Norfolk and attended Uppingham School and Stout's Hill. After his notorious three months in Pucklechurch prison for credit card fraud, he attended Queens College, Cambridge in 1979, finishing with a 2:1 in English in 1981/2. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Cherubs drinking club, and Footlights with Thompson, Tony Slattery, Martin Bergman, and Hugh Laurie (to whom he was introduced by E.T.). His prolific writing partnership with Laurie began in 1981 with resulting Footlights revues for (among others) Mayweek, Edinburgh Festival, and a three month tour of Australia. In 1984, Fry was engaged to do the rewrite of the Noel Gay musical "Me and My Girl," which made him a millionaire before the age of 30. It also earned him a nomination for a Tony award in 1987. (Sidenote: It was upon SF's suggestion that Emma Thompson landed a leading role in the London cast of this show.) Throughout the 1980s, Fry did a huge amount of television and radio work, as well as writing for newspapers (e.g. a weekly column in the "Daily Telegraph") and magazines (e.g. articles for "Arena"). He is probably best known for his television roles in Blackadder II (1986) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990).
His support of the Terence Higgins Trust through events such as the first "Hysteria" benefit, as well as numerous other charity efforts, are probably those works of which he is most proud. Fry's acting career has not been limited to films and television. He had successful runs in Alan Bennett's "Forty Years On," Simon Gray's "The Common Pursuit" with John Sessions, Rik Mayall, John Gordon Sinclair, and others. Michael Frayn's "Look Look" and Gray's "Cell Mates" were less successful for both Fry and their playwrights, the latter not helped by his walking out of the play after only a couple of weeks. Fry has published four novels as well as a collection of his radio and journalistic miscellanea. He has recorded audiotapes of his novels (an unabridged version of "The Liar" was released in 1995), as well as many other works for both adults and children.- Actor
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Gary Oldman is a talented English movie star and character actor, renowned for his expressive acting style. One of the most celebrated thespians of his generation, with a diverse career encompassing theatre, film and television, he is known for his roles as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Drexl in True Romance (1993), George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), among many others. For much of his career, he was best-known for playing over-the-top antagonists, such as terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One (1997), though he has reached a new audience with heroic roles in the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises. He is also a filmmaker, musician, and author.
Gary Leonard Oldman was born on March 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England, to Kathleen (Cheriton), a homemaker, and Leonard Bertram Oldman, a welder. He won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College, in Sidcup, Kent, where he received a B.A. in theatre arts in 1979. He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of plays throughout the early '80s, including "The Pope's Wedding," for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor for 1985. Before fame, he was employed as a worker in assembly lines and as a porter in an operating theater. He also had jobs selling shoes and beheading pigs while supporting his early acting career.
His film debut was Remembrance (1982), though his most-memorable early role came when he played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in the biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) picking up the Evening Standard Film Award as Best Newcomer. He then received a Best Actor nomination from BAFTA for his portrayal of '60s playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
In the 1990s, Oldman brought to life a series of iconic real-world and fictional villains including Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997) and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One (1997). That decade also saw Oldman portraying Ludwig van Beethoven in biopic Immortal Beloved (1994).
Oldman played the coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), giving him a key part in one of the highest-grossing franchises ever. He reprised that role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Oldman also took on the iconic role of Detective James Gordon in writer-director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role he played again in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Prominent film critic Mark Kermode, in reviewing The Dark Knight, wrote, "the best performance in the film, by a mile, is Gary Oldman's ... it would be lovely to see him get a[n Academy Award] nomination because actually, he's the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this."
Oldman co-starred with Jim Carrey in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol in which Oldman played three roles. He had a starring role in David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Unborn, released in 2009. In 2010, Oldman co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. He also played a lead role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Oldman voiced the role of villain Lord Shen and was nominated for an Annie Award for his performance in Kung Fu Panda 2.
In 2011, Oldman portrayed master spy George Smiley in the adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and the role scored Oldman his first Academy Award nomination. In 2014, he played one of the lead humans in the science fiction action film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) alongside Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Also in 2014, Oldman starred alongside Joel Kinnaman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of RoboCop (2014), as Norton, the scientist who creates RoboCop.
Aside from acting, Oldman tried his hand at writing and directing for Nil by Mouth (1997). The movie opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and won Kathy Burke a Best Actress prize at the festival.
Oldman has three children, Alfie, with first wife, actress Lesley Manville, and Gulliver and Charlie with his third wife, Donya Fiorentino. In 2017, he married writer and art curator Gisele Schmidt.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best actor for his work on Darkest Hour (2017).- Actor
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Peter Capaldi was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Nancy (Soutar) and Gerald John Capaldi. His parents owned an ice cream business. He is of Italian (from his paternal grandfather), Scottish, and Irish descent. Capaldi attended drama classes and was accepted into the Glasgow School of Art. After graduating he secured his breakthrough role in Local Hero (1983). Prior to becoming an actor he also worked as a graphic designer for BBC Scotland TV.
Peter was announced as the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who (2005) on 4th August 2013 on a BBC special programme. He had to hide it from his daughter who remarked to him why it is his name never came up during the buzz. It was a huge relief not to have to keep the secret anymore. His agent called and said "Hello Doctor" when informing him he had gotten the part.- Actress
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Shaw was already an accomplished theater actress when director Jim Sheridan awarded her a role in his film, My Left Foot (1989). The film is a telling of Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis), an Irishman disgruntled with his confinement to a body horribly crippled by cerebral palsy but who found incredible success as an artist and writer. Shaw portrayed Eileen Cole, the doctor largely responsible for Christy's education and physical rehabilitation. Since, Shaw has received several accolades for her film and television performances.- Actor
- Producer
- Animation Department
Sean Bean's career since the eighties spans theatre, radio, television and movies. Bean was born in Handsworth, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to Rita (Tuckwood) and Brian Bean. He worked for his father's welding firm before he decided to become an actor. He attended RADA in London and appeared in a number of West End stage productions including RSC's "Fair Maid of the West" (Spencer), (1986) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1987) (Romeo) , as well as "Deathwatch" (Lederer) (1985) at the Young Vic and "Killing the Cat" (Danny) (1990) at the Theatre Upstairs.
This soulful, green-eyed blonde's roles are so varied that his magnetic persona convincing plays angst-ridden villains, as in Clarissa (1991), passionate lovers like Mellors in Lady Chatterley (1993), rough-and-ready soldiers such as Richard Sharpe, heart wrenching warriors as the emotionally torn Boromir in "The Lord of the Rings," and noble Greeks, like Odysseus in Troy (2004), where his very presence in the film adds grace and validity to the rest of the movie. Recently, he did a turn in Shakespeare's "Macbeth," where as the principal lead, he so transfixed the audience that the show was extended in London and critically acclaimed. Bean, however, remains himself, a man's man, and in the glitzy world of movies this is a rare thing indeed. Bean resides in London where he enjoys raising his beautiful daughters, his beloved football, and the occasional pint.
Bean has three daughters, Lorna, Molly and Evie.- Actor
- Writer
- Visual Effects
Mark Williams was born on 22 August 1959 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for 101 Dalmatians (1996), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Shakespeare in Love (1998).- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Paul McGann was born on 14 November 1959 in Kensington, Liverpool, England, UK. He is an actor and director, known for The Three Musketeers (1993), Withnail & I (1987) and Alien 3 (1992). He has been married to Annie Milner since 1992. They have two children.- Actor
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Bradley Walsh was born on 4 June 1960 in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Coronation Street (1960), Law & Order: UK (2009) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007). He has been married to Donna Derby since 1997. They have one child.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hugh Grant, one of Britain's best known faces, has been equally entertaining on-screen as well as in real life, and has had enough sense of humor to survive a media frenzy. He is known for his roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), with Andie MacDowell, Notting Hill (1999), opposite Julia Roberts, and Music and Lyrics (2007), opposite Drew Barrymore, among his other works.
He was born Hugh John Mungo Grant on September 9, 1960, in Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom. His mother, Fyvola Susan (MacLean), was a teacher. His father, James Murray Grant, was an artist and carpet salesman, and his grandfather was in the British Army during WWII. He is of mostly Scottish and English descent, with many recent ancestors who were prominent in the military. Young Grant was fond of literature and acting. He won a scholarship to Oxford, going up to New College in 1979. There he was involved in student drama, and considered a career as an art historian. After Oxford, he turned down a scholarship to do postgraduate studies in Art History at the Courtauld Institute in London, and focused on his acting career. In 1982, while still a student, Grant made his big screen debut in Privileged (1982) by director Michael Hoffman.
Grant's breakthrough came with the leading role as Charles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), opposite Andie MacDowell, a role which won him a Golden Globe Award, as well as a BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor. During the 1990s Grant established himself as a very original and resourceful actor. He played a string of characters projecting a positive mindset, showing how do you stay optimistic when you are actually worried about a cascade of troubles. Grant had his own experience as a survivor of an unfortunate episode in his private life, which he managed to overcome thanks to having a pretty damn good outlook on life.
His forte is playing characters projecting warmth and sincere happiness, with his hallmark stuttering, albeit some accused him of reprising the same character he has been playing for the past two decades. Grant's ability to show his character development within a limited screen time shines in Love Actually (2003), with his witty portrayal of a Prime Minister whose personal insecurities become intertwined with his country's international affairs, a performance that earned him a nomination for European Audience Award. His screen presence and skillful understatement takes his characters beyond the written script, thanks to his mastery of timing and effortless style.
Outside of his acting profession, Grant has been a good athlete, he played cricket and football in his younger years. He enjoys playing golf, frequently taking part in Pro-Am tournaments. He has been an avid art lover since his younger years, and has been collecting fine art, a passion he inherited from his father.- Actor
- Producer
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Colin Andrew Firth was born into an academic family in Grayshott, Hampshire, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at the Open University, and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, lectured on history at Winchester University College (formerly King Alfred's College) in Winchester, and worked on education for the Nigerian government. His grandparents were missionaries. His siblings Katie Firth and Jonathan Firth are also actors.
Firth's first acting experience came in infant's school when he played "Jack Frost" in a Christmas pantomime. Three of his four grandparents were Methodist missionaries and he spent his early childhood in Nigeria, returning to England at age five where he entered a comprehensive school in Winchester. He spent two years at the Drama Centre, then in Chalk Farm, where he was "discovered" whist playing "Hamlet" during his final term. His first professional role was as "Bennet" in the West End production of "Another Country". From this performance, he was chosen to play the character of "Judd" in the movie of the play. He went on to play a variety of character parts in both film and television. For his portrayal of "Robert Lawrence" in the 1989 TV production Tumbledown (1988), he received the Royal Television Society Best Actor award and also a BAFTA nomination. He also received a BAFTA nomination for "Mr. Darcy" in the 1995 TV version of Pride and Prejudice (1995). In 2011, he won the Oscar for Best Actor for his commanding leading role, playing British King George VI in The King's Speech (2010).- Actress
- Producer
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The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically-lauded legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), however, her androgynous looks and often bizarre appeal have been embraced by more mainstream crowds as well.
She was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton into a patrician Scottish military family on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors. Educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, Tilda subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English Literature.
During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and proceeded to work for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she appeared in such productions as "Measure for Measure." The rebel insider her, however, was strong and she left the company after a year as her approach and interests began to shift dramatically. With a pungent taste for the unique and seldom tried, Tilda found some gender-bending stage roles come her way. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man," a role she later committed to film (Man to Man (1992)).
In 1985, the tall, slender performer with alabaster skin and carrot-topped hair began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with the groundbreaking writer/director/cinematographer for the next nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky, highly fascinating alliance would produce such stark and radical turns as the Berlin International Film Festival winners Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) (playing Isabella, in which she won "Best Actress" at the Venice Film Festival) and Wittgenstein (1993), as well as the films Soursweet (1988) (a movie with no spoken dialogue) and the Stockholm Film Festival Award winner Blue (1993).
Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994. His untimely demise left a devastating void in Tilda's life for quite some time. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period, however, came from a non-Jarman film. For the vivid title role in Orlando (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following.
Over the years, Tilda has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), Teknolust (2002), Young Adam (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and Béla Tarr's The Man from London (2007) have added to her mystique. Back in 1995, she delved into a performance art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was put on display to the public for a week, asleep (or apparently so), in a glass case.
Following the birth of her twins in 1997, Tilda would leave lean for a time towards Hollywood mainstream filming. The thriller The Deep End (2001), earned her a number of critic's awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Other visible U.S. pictures included The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, fantasy epic Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-decorated performance in Michael Clayton (2007) and, of course, her iconic White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Into the millennium, Tilda continued to amaze starring in the crime drama Julia (2008) and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), starred in the psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013), and earned fine notice in Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (2013). She also starred in the dark romantic fantasy drama Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch, had a small role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and played a rock star in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015).
Showing no signs of slowing up, Tilda continues to make creative, visual impressions in such films as the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) where she reunited with Clooney and had a dual role playing twin journalists, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film Doctor Strange (2016), while repeating the part of The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame (2019). She gave another eccentric, unhinged performance in the action adventure message movie Okja (2017), played Betsy Trotwood in a contemporary telling of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) and teamed up again with writer/director Jim Jarmusch in the thoroughly offbeat fantasy horror comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).- Actor
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Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter, and Frances (Harper), both born in 1930. He has two siblings, William Branagh, Jr. (born 1955) and Joyce Branagh (born 1970). When he was nine, his family escaped The Troubles by moving to Reading, Berkshire, England. At 23, Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he took on starring roles in "Henry V" and "Romeo and Juliet". He soon found the RSC too large and impersonal and formed his own, the Renaissance Theatre Company, which now counts Prince Charles as one of its royal patrons. At 29, he directed Henry V (1989), where he also co-starred with his then-wife, Emma Thompson. The film brought him Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nominations. In 1993, he brought Shakespeare to mainstream audiences again with his hit adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), which featured an all-star cast that included, among others, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves. At 30, he published his autobiography and, at 34, he directed and starred as "Victor Frankenstein" in the big-budget adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein (1994), with Robert De Niro as the monster himself. In 1996, Branagh wrote, directed and starred in a lavish adaptation of Hamlet (1996). His superb film acting work also includes a wide range of roles such as in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Valkyrie (2008) and his stunning portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011), where once again he offered a great performance that was also nominated for an Academy Award.- Actor
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Often mistaken for an American because of his skill at imitating accents, actor Tim Roth was born Timothy Simon Roth on May 14, 1961 in Lambeth, London, England. His mother, Ann, was a teacher and landscape painter. His father, Ernie, was a journalist who had changed the family name from "Smith" to "Roth"; Ernie was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an immigrant family of Irish ancestry.
Tim grew up in Dulwich, a middle-class area in the south of London. He demonstrated his talent for picking up accents at an early age when he attended school in Brixton, where he faced persecution from classmates for his comfortable background and quickly perfected a cockney accent to blend in. He attended Camberwell Art College and studied sculpture before he dropped out and pursued acting.
The blonde actor's first big break was the British TV movie Made in Britain (1982). Roth made a huge splash in that film as a young skinhead named Trevor. He next worked with director Mike Leigh on Meantime (1983), which he has counted among his favorite projects. He debuted on the big screen when he filled in for Joe Strummer in the Stephen Frears neo-noir The Hit (1984). Roth gained more attention for his turn as Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent & Theo (1990) and his work opposite Gary Oldman in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990).
He moved to Los Angeles in search of work and caught the eye of young director Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino had envisioned Roth as a possible Mr. Blonde or Mr. Pink in his heist flick Reservoir Dogs (1992), but Roth campaigned for the role of Mr. Orange instead, and ultimately won the part. It proved to be a huge breakthrough for Roth, as audiences found it difficult to forget his performance as a member of a group of jewelry store robbers who is slowly bleeding to death. Tarantino cast Roth again in the landmark film Pulp Fiction (1994). Roth and actress Amanda Plummer played a pair of robbers who hold up a restaurant. 1995 saw the third of Roth's collaborations with Tarantino, a surprisingly slapstick performance in the anthology film Four Rooms (1995). That same year Roth picked up an Academy Award nomination for his campy turn as a villain in the period piece Rob Roy (1995).
Continuing to take on disparate roles, Roth did his own singing (with an American accent to boot) in the lightweight Woody Allen musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996). He starred opposite Tupac Shakur in Shakur's last film, the twisted comedy Gridlock'd (1997). The pair received positive critical notices for their comic chemistry. Standing in contrast to the criminals and baddies that crowd his CV, Roth's work as the innocent, seafaring pianist in the Giuseppe Tornatore film The Legend of 1900 (1998) became something of a fan favorite. Grittier fare followed when Roth made his directorial debut with The War Zone (1999), a frank, critically acclaimed drama about a family torn apart by incest. He made his next high-profile appearance as an actor as General Thade, an evil simian in the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes (2001). Roth was, of course, all but unrecognizable in his primate make-up.
Roth has continued to enjoy a mix of art house and mainstream work, including everything from the lead role in Francis Ford Coppola's esoteric Youth Without Youth (2007) to becoming "The Abomination" in the special effects-heavy blockbuster The Incredible Hulk (2008). Roth took his first major American television role when he signed on to the Fox-TV series Lie to Me (2009)- Actor
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Iain Glen is a Scottish actor, born June 24, 1961, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, an independent school for boys (now co-educational), followed by the University of Aberdeen. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he was the winner of the Bancroft Gold Medal. He and his first wife, Susannah Harker (House of Cards (1990), Pride and Prejudice (1995), Ultraviolet (1998)) have a son, Finlay. They divorced in 2004. He met Charlotte Emmerson at the National Theatre while he was performing Streetcar Named Desire with Glenn Close. They have two children, Mary and Juliet. They finally married in the summer of 2017.
Iain immediately rose to prominence in1988 with his acclaimed performance as a charismatic gang leader in The Fear for Euston films, followed by his multi-award winning tour de force as imprisoned Scottish poet Larry Winters in Silent Scream in 1990. In the same year he was cast as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in Tom Stoppard's film adaptation of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. He was nominated in 1998 for an Olivier Award for his performance in The Blue Room opposite Nicole Kidman. He also received Olivier nominations for Martin Guerre (1996), and The Crucible (2006). Further stage credits include the title roles in Hamlet, Macbeth, Uncle Vanya and Henry V at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Glen has been described as, "The greatest Scottish theatre actor of his generation." In 2002, he starred with Emilia Fox in the Italian-French-British romance-drama film The Soul Keeper directed by Roberto Faenza. In 2003 Aberdeen University awarded him an Honorary Degree: Doctor of Laws, Iain Glen BA (For Services to the Arts). It was announced in 2009 that Glen would star as Ser Jorah Mormont in the HBO series Game of Thrones. Glen has appeared in all seasons (1-VIII) and the show has gone on to win more Emmys than any prime time TV show in the history of the awards. In 2010, he played the role of Father Octavian, leader of a sect of clerics who were on a mission against the Weeping Angels in "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone," a two-episode story which formed part of the fifth season of Doctor Who. He appeared in the second series of Downton Abbey, as Sir Richard Carlisle, a tabloid publisher who is a suitor to, and subsequently engaged to, Lady Mary. He was a member of the Outstanding Ensemble that won the SAG award in 2013. Further television credits include Wives and Daughters, Diary of Anne Frank, Delicious, Glasgow Kiss, Prisoner's Wives and Kidnapped. Other Film Credits include Small Engine Repair, Mountains of the Moon, Song for a Raggy Boy, Eye in the Sky, My Cousin Rachel, Resident Evil and Fortune's Fool (Evening Standard Award for Best Actor). From 2010 to the present Glen has played the title character in the celebrated Irish TV crime series Jack Taylor adapted from the novels by Ken Bruen. He has starred in many radio plays including a new 4-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz, directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Sasha Yevtushenko.- Actor
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Actor Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England, to Jennifer Anne Mary Alleyne (Lash), a novelist, and Mark Fiennes, a photographer. He is the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a musician; Sophie Fiennes, a producer; and Joseph Fiennes, an actor. He is of English, Irish, and Scottish origin.
A noted Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage at the Royal National Theatre. Fiennes first worked on screen in 1990 and then made his film debut in 1992 as Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992), opposite Juliette Binoche. 1993 was his "breakout year". He had a major role in the controversial Peter Greenaway film The Baby of Mâcon (1993), with Julia Ormond, which was poorly received. Later that year he became known internationally for portraying the amoral Nazi concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). For this he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He did not win, but did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for the role, as well as Best Supporting Actor honors from numerous critics groups, including the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York, Chicago, Boston, and London Film Critics associations. His portrayal as Göth also earned him a spot on the American Film Institute's list of Top 50 Film Villains. To look suitable to represent Goeth, Fiennes gained weight, but he managed to shed it afterwards. In 1994, he portrayed American academic Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show (1994). In 1996, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Count Almásy the World War II epic romance, and another Best Picture winner, Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), in which he starred with Kristin Scott Thomas. He also received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, as well as two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations, one for Best Actor and another shared with the film's ensemble cast.
Since then, Fiennes has been in a number of notable films, including Strange Days (1995), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), the animated The Prince of Egypt (1998), István Szabó's Sunshine (1999), Neil Jordan-directed films The End of the Affair (1999) and The Good Thief (2002), Red Dragon (2002), Maid in Manhattan (2002), The Constant Gardener (2005), In Bruges (2008), The Reader (2008), co-starring Kate Winslet, Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar®-winning The Hurt Locker (2008), Clash of the Titans (2010), Mike Newell's screen adaptation of Charles Dickens'Great Expectations (2012), with Helena Bonham Carter and Jeremy Irvine, and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
He is also known for his roles in major film franchises such as the Harry Potter film series (2005-2011), in which he played the evil Lord Voldemort. His nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin played Tom Riddle, the young Lord Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009). Ralph also appears in the James Bond series, in which he has played M, starting with the 2012 film Skyfall (2012).
In 2011, Fiennes made his directorial debut with his film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy political thriller Coriolanus (2011), in which he also played the title character, opposite Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave. Fiennes has won a Tony Award for playing Prince Hamlet on Broadway.
In 2015, Fiennes played a music producer in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015), starring opposite Tilda Swinton and Matthias Schoenaerts, and in 2016, Fiennes starred in Joel and Ethan Coen's Hail, Caesar! (2016).
Since 1999, Fiennes has served as an ambassador for UNICEF UK.- Actor
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David Thewlis was born David Wheeler in 1963 in Blackpool, Lancashire, to Maureen (Thewlis) and Alec Raymond Wheeler, and lived with his parents above their combination wallpaper and toy shop during his childhood. Originally, he came to London with his band Door 66, however he changed his plans and entered Guildhall School of Drama.
He had minor roles in films and TV until he took the main role in Naked (1993). The film won him several awards including the New York Critics Award. He has since been in many other films including DragonHeart (1996), Restoration (1995), Black Beauty (1994) and he took the part of Professor Remus John Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and its sequels.
Recently, he starred in the third season of FX's Fargo (2014).
He lived with the British actress Anna Friel from 2001-2010. They have a daughter, Gracie Ellen Mary, born July 9, 2005.- Christopher Eccleston trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and first came to public attention as Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It (1991). However, it was a regular role in the television series Cracker (1993) that made him a recognizable figure in the United Kingdom. He appeared in the low-budget thriller Shallow Grave (1994), and in the same year, won the part of Nicky Hutchinson in the epic BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North (1996). It was the transmission of the latter series on BBC Two that really made him into a household name in the United Kingdom. In his film career, he has starred as a leading man alongside a number of major actresses, such as Renée Zellweger in A Price Above Rubies (1998), Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998), and Cameron Diaz and Jordana Brewster in The Invisible Circus (2001), and Nicole Kidman in The Others (2001).
In addition to his successful film career, he has continued to work in television, appearing in some of the most challenging and thought-provoking British dramas. These have included Clocking Off (2000) and Flesh and Blood (2002) for the BBC and Hillsborough (1996), the Iago character in a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's "Othello", and the religious epic The Second Coming (2003), playing Steve Baxter, the son of God. His stage career, while not as extensive as his screen credits, has nevertheless shown him to be a formidable actor. He has given intense, focused performances in such plays as "Hamlet", "Electricity" and "Miss Julie", for which he received excellent reviews.
A very highly regarded actor, Eccleston has twice been nominated in the Best Actor category at the BAFTA Television Awards, the British premiere television awards ceremony. His first nomination came in 1997 for Our Friends in the North (1996). Although he didn't win those awards, however, he did triumph in the Best Actor categories at the 1997 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards and the Royal Television Society Awards, winning for Our Friends in the North (1996). He won the RTS Best Actor award for a second time in 2003, this time for his performance in "Flesh and Blood". In 2005, he received the Most Popular Actor award in the National Television Awards for starring in Russell T. Davies's re-imagining of Doctor Who (2005). - Actor
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English film actor, director and author Andy Serkis is known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for such computer-generated characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), the eponymous King Kong in the 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Serkis earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of serial killer Ian Brady in the British television film Longford (2006), and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his portrayal of new wave and punk rock musician Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2015, he had a small role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Serkis has his own motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium Studios in London, which he will use for his directorial debut, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).
Andrew Clement G. Serkis was born April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, West London, England. He has three sisters and a brother. His father, Clement Serkis, an ethnic Armenian whose original family surname was Serkissian, was a medical doctor working abroad, in Iraq; the Serkis family spent time around the Middle East, and for the first ten years of his life, Andy traveled between Baghdad and London. His mother, Lylie (Weech), who is British-born, was busy working as a special education teacher of handicapped children, so Andy and his four siblings were raised with au pairs in the house. Young Serkis wanted to be an artist; he was fond of painting and drawing, and visualized himself working behind the scenes. He attended St. Benedict's School, a Roman Catholic School for boys at the Benedictine Abbey in London. Serkis studied visual arts at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. There, he became involved in mechanical aspects of the theatre and did stage design and set building for theatrical productions. Then, Serkis was asked to play a role in a student production, and made his stage debut in Barrie Keeffe's play, "Gotcha"; thereafter, he switched from stage design to acting, which was a real calling that transformed his life.
Instead of going to an acting college, Serkis, in 1985, began his professional acting career at the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster, where he was given an Equity card and performed in fourteen plays, one after another, as an apprentice of Jonathan Petherbridge. After that, he worked in touring theatre companies, doing it for no money, fueled by a sense of enthusiasm, moving to a new town every week. He has thus appeared in a host of popular plays and on almost every renowned British stage. In 1989, he appeared in a stage production of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", so beginning his long association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, where he would return many times, to appear in "She Stoops to Conquer", "Your Home in the West" and the "True Nature of Love", among other plays. In the 1990s, Serkis began to make his mark on the London stage, appearing at the Royal Court Theatre as "The Fool" in "King Lear", making his interpretation of "The Fool" as the woman that "Lear", a widower, could relate to - a man, in drag, as a Victorian musician. He also appeared as "Potts" in the hit play, "Mojo", playing in front of full houses and earning huge critical success. In 1987, Serkis made his debut on television, and he acted in several major British TV miniseries throughout the 1990s.
In 1999, Andy Serkis landed the prize role of "Gollum" in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's saga, "The Lord of the Rings". He spent four years in the part and received awards and nominations for his performance as "Gollum", a computer-generated character in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), which won 11 Oscars. "Gollum" was the collaborative team's effort around Serkis's work in performance capture - an art form based on CGI-assisted acting. Serkis's work was an interactive performance in a skin-tight CGI suit with markers allowing cameras to track and register 3D position for each marker. Serkis' every nuance was picked up by several cameras positioned at precisely calculated angles to allow for the software to see enough information to process the image. The images of Serkis' performances were translated into the digital format by animators at Weta Digital studio in New Zealand. There, his image was key-frame animated and then edited into the movie, Serkis did have one scene in "The Return of the King" showing how he originally had the ring, killing another hobbit to posses it after they found it during a fishing trip. He drew from his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the constricted voice he produced for "Gollum" and "Sméagol", and it was also enhanced by sound editing in post-production.
Serkis spent almost two years in New Zealand and away from his family, and much of 2002 and 2003 in post-production studios for large periods of time, due to complexity of the creative process of bringing the character of "Gollum" to the screen. Serkis had to shoot two versions for every scene; one version was with him on camera, acting with (chiefly) Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, which served both to show Wood and Astin the moves so that they could precisely interact with the movements of "Gollum", and to provide the CGI artists the subtleties of Gollum's physical movements and facial expressions for their manual finishing of the animated images. In the other version, he'd go the voice off-camera, as Wood and Astin repeated their movements as though "Gollum" were there with them; that take would be the basis for inserting the CGI Gollum used in the released movie. In post-production, Serkis was doing motion-capture wearing a skintight motion capture suit with CGI gear while acting as a virtual puppeteer redoing every single scene in the studio. Additional CGI rotomation was done by animators using the human eye instead of the computer to capture the subtleties of Serkis' performance. Serkis also used this art form in his performance as "Kong" in King Kong (2005), which won him a Toronto Film Critics Association Award (2005) for his unprecedented work helping to realize the main character in "King Kong", and a Visual Effects Society Award (2006) for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture.
Apart from his line of CGI-driven characters, Serkis continued with traditional acting in several leading and supporting roles, such as his appearances as "Richard Kneeland" opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004), and "Alley" opposite David Bowie in The Prestige (2006), among other film performances. On television, he starred as 'Vincent Van Gogh' in the sixth episode of Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006), the BBC2 series about artists. Serkis is billed as "Capricorn" in the upcoming adventure film, Inkheart (2008). At the same time, he continued the development of performance capture while expanding his career into computer games. He starred as "King Bothan" in the martial arts drama, Heavenly Sword (2007), a Playstation 3 title, for which he provided a basis for his in-game face and also acts as a dramatic director on the project.
Andy Serkis married actress and singer Lorraine Ashbourne, and the couple have three children: daughter Ruby Serkis (born in 1998), and two sons Sonny Serkis (born in 2000) and Louis Ashbourne Serkis (born on 19 June 2004), who is now also a movie star. Away from acting, Andy Serkis is an accomplished amateur painter. Since his school years at Lancaster, being so close to the Lake District, Serkis developed his other passion in life: mountaineering. He is a pescetarian. Serkis has been active in charitable causes, such as The Hope Foundation, which provides essential life-saving medical aid for children suffering from Leukemia and children from countries devastated by war. In October 2006, he was a presenter at the first annual British Academy Video Games Awards at the Roundhouse, London. Andy Serkis lives with his family in North London, England.- Actress
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Sarah Lancashire was born on 10 October 1964 in Oldham, Lancashire, England, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Happy Valley (2014), Yesterday (2019) and Clocking Off (2000). She has been married to Peter Salmon since 22 August 2001. They have one child. She was previously married to Gary Hargreaves.- Actor
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Paul Kaye was born on 15 December 1965 in Clapham, London, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for The Stranger (2020), Game of Thrones (2011) and Three Girls (2017). He has been married to Orly Katz since November 1989. They have two children.- Actress
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Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.
Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker. Through her father, she is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director, Bonham Carter's great-uncle Anthony Asquith, who made Pygmalion (1938) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), among others. Cousin Crispin Bonham-Carter is also an actor. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish diplomat who was awarded the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel, for helping save Jews during World War II (Eduardo's own father was a Czech Jew). Helena's maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was from an upper-class Jewish family from France, Austria, and Germany, and later converted to her husband's Catholic faith.
Bonham Carter experienced family dramas during her childhood, including her father's stroke - which left him wheelchair-bound. She attended South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, and subsequently devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age thirteen, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory "Spotlight." She soon had her first agent and her first acting job, in a commercial, at age sixteen. She then landed a role in the made-for-TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983), which subsequently led to her casting in the Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View (1985), director James Ivory's tasteful adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel, and Lady Jane (1986), giving a strong performance as the uncrowned Queen of England. She had roles in three other productions under the Merchant-Ivory banner (director Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala): an uncredited appearance in Maurice (1987), and large roles in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992).
Often referred to as the "corset queen" or "English rose" because of her early work, Bonham Carter continued to surprise audiences with magnificent performances in a variety of roles from her more traditional corset-clad character in The Wings of the Dove (1997) and Shakespearian damsels to the dark and neurotic anti-heroines of Fight Club (1999). Her acclaimed performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997) earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, and a SAG Awards Best Actress nomination. It also won her a Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Boston Society Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Texas Society of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
In the late 1990s, Bonham Carter embarked on the next phase of her career, moving from capable actress to compelling star. Audiences and critics had long been enchanted by her delicate beauty, evocative of another time and place. Her late '90s and early and mid 2000s roles included Mick Jackson's Live from Baghdad (2002), alongside Michael Keaton, receiving a nomination for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe; Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight (1998), in which she played a victim of motor neurone disease; Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), in which she played Olivia; opposite Woody Allen in his Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum (1995); Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994); and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990).
Other notable credits include her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine (2001), Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, in which she played an ape, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me (2002), opposite Paul Bettany, and Big Fish (2003), her second effort with Tim Burton, in which she appeared as a witch.
In between her films, Helena has managed a few television appearances, which include her portrayal of Jacqui Jackson in Magnificent 7 (2005), the tale of a mother struggling to raise seven children - three daughters and four autistic boys; as Anne Boleyn in the two-parter biopic of Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone; and as Morgan Le Fey, alongside Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson, in Merlin. Earlier television appearances include Michael Mann's Miami Vice (1984) as Don Johnson's junkie fiancée, and as a stripper who wins Rik Mayall's heart in Dancing Queen (1993). Helena has also appeared on stage, in productions of Trelawney of the Wells, The Barber of Seville, House of Bernarda Alba, The Chalk Garden, and Woman in White.
Bonham Carter was nominated for a Golden Globe for the fifth time for her role in partner Tim Burton's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), for which Burton and co-star Johnny Depp were also nominated. For the role, she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other 2000s work includes playing Mrs Bucket in Tim Burton's massive hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), providing the voices for the aristocratic Lady Campanula Tottington in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and for the eponymous dead heroine in Tim Burton's spooky Corpse Bride (2005), and co-starring in Conversations with Other Women (2005) opposite Aaron Eckhart.
After their meeting while filming Planet of the Apes (2001), Bonham Carter and Tim Burton made seven films together. They lived in adjoining residences in London, shared a connecting hallway, and have two children: Billy Ray Burton, born in 2003, and Nell Burton, who was born in 2007. Ironically, a mutual love of Sweeney Todd was part of the initial attraction for the pair. Bonham Carter has said in numerous interviews that her audition process for the role of Mrs. Lovett was the most grueling of her career and that, ultimately, it was Sondheim who she had to convince that she was right for the role.- Actress
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Michelle Gomez is a Scottish actress. She gained recognition for her roles in the comedy series The Book Group (2002-2003), Green Wing (2004-2007), and Bad Education (2012-2013). She went on to appear as Missy in the long-running British science fiction series Doctor Who (2014-2017), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress.- Siobhan Finneran was born on 27 April 1966 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Downton Abbey (2010), Boy A (2007) and Happy Valley (2014). She was previously married to Mark Jordon.
- Six foot six inches tall, with brown eyes and dark hair, Rory McCann from Glasgow began his working life at the top - as a painter on the Forth Bridge in Scotland. He came to notice in a television commercial for Scotts' Porridge Oats, in which he appeared as a scantily-clad hunk in a vest and kilt and little else wandering snowbound streets but warmed by the inner glow of the porridge. He claims that as a consequence he was often approached by people demanding that he "lift his kilt." In 2002 he was seen in the TV comedy-drama 'The Book Group' playing a wheelchair-bound lifeguard, a part for which he won a Scottish BAFTA award for the best television performance of 2002. Since then he has taken television roles as Peter the Great and a priest in 'Shameless'. He made his Hollywood debut in Oliver Stone's 'Alexander'. He divides his time between homes in London and Glencoe, Scotland, where he aims to have his own castle. He is an accomplished singer, pianist and harmonica-player as well as an all-round sportsman. Since 2012 he has been part of the international television block-buster 'Game of Thrones'.
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Ashley Jensen (born on 11 August 1969) is a Scottish actress and narrator. She was nominated for an Emmy for her role on the television series Extras (2005), on which she appeared from 2005-2007. She was also a cast member on the ABC show Ugly Betty (2006) and the brief-lived CBS sitcom Accidentally on Purpose (2009).- Actor
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English actor Warwick Davis was born in Epsom, Surrey, England, the son of Susan J. (Pain) and Ashley Davis, an insurance broker. Davis was born with the condition spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenital (SED), which caused his dwarfism. He was educated at City of London Freemen's School. When he was 11 years old, his grandmother heard a radio appeal for people under four feet tall to appear in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). A huge Star Wars fan, Davis auditioned successfully and was cast as an extra, playing an Ewok. Kenny Baker was cast as lead Ewok Wicket, but fell ill so George Lucas chose Davis to replace him. The film was a smash hit, and Davis went on to reprise his role as Wicket in further TV projects - The Ewok Adventure (1984) and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985).
Davis next big role came with a part specifically written for him, as the titular hero in Willow (1988). Other successes followed with roles in such projects as Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1989) and two distinctly different film series - the 'Harry Potter' and 'Leprechaun' film series. In 2006, he appeared in a cameo role in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's hit sitcom Extras (2005), which led to the pair writing a series specifically for Davis, the comic mockumentary Life's Too Short (2011).
Davis, along with his father-in-law Peter Burroughs, is also the director of an acting agency for very short and tall actors called Willow Management. He is married to Samantha Davis and they have a son and a daughter.- Actor
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English actor, writer, and comedian Simon Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, to Gillian Rosemary (Smith), a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician. His parents divorced when he was seven. He later took his stepfather's surname "Pegg." He was educated at Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School in Gloucestershire and went on to Stratford-upon-Avon College to study English literature and performance studies. He then attended the University of Bristol, and earned a bachelor's degree in drama. In the early 2000s, Pegg moved to London and began forging a successful career in stand-up comedy. Television opportunities followed including roles in Six Pairs of Pants (1995), Asylum (1996), and We Know Where You Live (1997). In 1999, Pegg and Jessica Hynes teamed up to write and star in cult sitcom Spaced (1999), directed by Edgar Wright. The series also featured Pegg's best friend Nick Frost. Pegg's breakthrough in film came with the zom-rom-com Shaun of the Dead (2004), which he also co-wrote with director Edgar Wright. Again, the film featured Nick Frost. The trio also scored a hit with police comedy Hot Fuzz (2007). Further film successes followed for Pegg, notably in the iconic role of Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in Star Trek (2009) and alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).- Actor
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John Simm was born on 10 July 1970 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and grew up in Nelson, Lancashire. He attended Edge End High School, Nelson, Lancashire, followed by Blackpool Drama College at 16 and the Drama Centre, London, at 19. He lives with his wife, actress Kate Magowan, and their children Ryan (born 13 August 2001) and Molly (born February 2007). Simm won the best actor award at the Valencia Film Festival for his film debut in Boston Kickout (1995).- Actor
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Ewan Gordon McGregor was born on March 31, 1971 in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland, to Carol Diane (Lawson) and James Charles McGregor, both teachers. His uncle is actor Denis Lawson. He was raised in Crieff. At age 16, he left Morrison Academy to join the Perth Repertory Theatre. His parents encouraged him to leave school and pursue his acting goals rather than be unhappy. McGregor studied drama for a year at Kirkcaldly in Fife, then enrolled at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama for a three-year course. He studied alongside Daniel Craig and Alistair McGowan, among others, and left right before graduating after snagging the role of Private Mick Hopper in Dennis Potter's six-part Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). His first notable role was that of Alex Law in Shallow Grave (1994), directed by Danny Boyle, written by John Hodge and produced by Andrew Macdonald. This was followed by The Pillow Book (1995) and Trainspotting (1996), the latter of which brought him to the public's attention.
He is now one of the most critically acclaimed actors of his generation, and portrays Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first three Star Wars episodes. McGregor is married to French production designer Eve Mavrakis, whom he met while working on the television series Kavanagh QC (1995). They married in France in the summer of 1995, and have four daughters. McGregor formed a production company, with friends Jonny Lee Miller, Sean Pertwee, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Damon Bryant, Bradley Adams and Geoff Deehan, called "Natural Nylon", and hoped it would make innovative films that do not conform to Hollywood standards. McGregor and Bryant left the company in 2002. He was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to drama and charity.
Ewan made his directorial debut with American Pastoral (2016), an adaptation of Philip Roth's book, in which Ewan also starred.
In 2018 McGregor won an Golden Globe for his work in the TV Series Fargo.- Actor
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Widely considered as one of the greatest stage and screen actors of his generation both in his native Scotland and internationally, David Tennant was born David John McDonald in West Lothian, Scotland, to Essdale Helen (McLeod) and Sandy McDonald, who was a Presbyterian minister. He is of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent. When he was about 3 or 4 years old, he decided to become an actor, inspired by his love of Doctor Who (1963).
He was brought up in Bathgate, West Lothian and Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland and was a huge fan of the band The Proclaimers. He attended Paisley Grammar school and while there he wrote about how he wanted to become a professional actor and play the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who (1963).
He made his first television appearance (which was also his first professional acting job) when he was 16, after his father sent some photos of him to a casting director at Scottish television. He also attended a youth theatre group at weekends run by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now renamed the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). When he was 16 he auditioned for and won a place at the academy; the youngest student to ever do so, and started as a full time drama student when he was 17.
He worked regularly in theatre and TV after leaving drama school, and his first big break came in 1994 when he was cast in a lead role in the Scottish drama Takin' Over the Asylum (1994). He then moved to London where his career thrived. Among other significant factors of his prolific artistic course, he spent several years as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and became famous from his lead roles in TV dramas Blackpool (2004) and Casanova (2005).
In 2005, his childhood wish came true. David was cast to play the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who (2005) alongside Billie Piper, after Christopher Eccleston decided to leave. Playing the Doctor made him a household name and a sex symbol, being voted "Sexiest Man in the Universe" by readers of The Pink Paper and 16th Sexiest Man in the World by a Cosmopolitan survey. Since leaving the series in 2010 his career has continued to rise, with lead roles in films, TV series and theatre.- Actor
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Richard Crispin Armitage was born and raised in Leicester, England, to Margaret (Hendey), a secretary, and John Armitage, an engineer. He attended Pattison College in Binley Road, Coventry, where he discovered his love for acting. He took part in many theatre productions all over the UK, from musical theatre (Cats) to classical theatre (Death of a Salesman). He enrolled at LAMDA in 1995 and starred in The Cherry Orchard and The Normal Heart among others.
He started working in cinema in 1999 with some small roles in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Cleopatra and This Year's Love (1999). In 2000 he took part in the RSC Macbeth tour of the USA and Japan with Antony Sher as the lead actor. In 2002, he had a breakthrough with his role as the charming but a bit odd character John Standring in Sparkhouse (2002), a BBC Miniseries in three parts, opposite Sarah Smart. After two guest-roles in Cold Feet (1997) in 2003 and Between the Sheets (2003), he landed a role as Steven in Frozen (2005). In 2004, he became famous throughout the whole UK with his role of mill-owner John Thornton in North & South (2004) (BBC). He landed a key role in BBC Robin Hood from 2006 to 2009 as the dark and evil Guy of Gisborne, then from 2008 to 2010 he played Lucas North in the successful British series Spooks (MI-5 in the USA). He kept working on British TV (Strike Back: Origins in 2010) and had a small but pivotal role in Captain America: the first Avenger, till he became known worldwide with his role of Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's trilogy of The Hobbit (2012/2014), for which he received a Saturn Award. In 2014 he was the protagonist of Yael Farber's acclaimed version of Arthur Miller's The Crucible at the Old Vic in London, for which role he was nominated for an Olivier Award. He starred in the third season of Hannibal (2015) in the role of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, which got him another Saturn Award. In 2016 he starred in the Epix original series Berlin Station in the lead role of Daniel Miller, and in the same year he received many positive reviews for his role of Kenneth in Mike Bartlett's Love, love, love for Roundabout Theatre in NYC. In 2017 He worked on Ocean's Eight, and on the second season of Berlin Station. In July 2017 the film Pilgrimage came out with many positive reviews. He has narrated several audio books with Audible, for which he has received two nominations for an Audie Award. He has recently given the voice to Trevor Belmont in the series Castlevania on Netflix.- Actor
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Martin Freeman is an English actor, known for portraying Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film trilogy, Tim Canterbury in the original UK version of sitcom mockumentary The Office (2001), Dr. John Watson in the British crime drama Sherlock (2010) and Lester Nygaard in the dark comedy-crime drama TV series Fargo (2014).
His other notable film roles include the romantic comedy Love Actually (2003) and the comic science fiction film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005).- Director
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Born in Cardiff, Chris Addison grew up in Manchester where he attended the Manchester Grammar School before going on to study at the University of Birmingham. Following his graduation in 1994, he put ambitions to direct theatre on hold and "drifted into stand-up comedy" which became his full-time job in 1996. He wrote and performed eight one-man shows at the Edinburgh Festival, gaining two Perrier Award nominations and going on to turn two of the shows ('The Ape That Got Lucky' and 'Civilization') into series for BBC Radio.
He moved into acting in 2005, with the role of Ollie Reeder in Armando Iannucci's BBC sitcom The Thick of It (2005). Subsequent roles have included the Cameron-esque evil headmaster David Blood in three series of Skins (2007), Seb in Doctor Who (2005) and the hard-living porn Svengali Tony Power in Michael Winterbottom's movie The Look of Love (2013). In 2016 he took and co-wrote the spoken role of Smith in Emanuel Chabrier's opera 'L'Étoile' at The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
During the final series of The Thick of It (2005), he made his directorial debut and subsequently went on to direct many episodes of HBO's Veep (2012), for which he won the Directors Guild of America Award in 2016 as well as an Emmy nomination. In 2015 he won an Emmy for his work as Executive Producer on the show.
He has co-created two sitcoms, Lab Rats (2008) (with Carl Cooper) and Trying Again (2014) (with Simon Blackwell), both of which he starred in.
Chris has written two books, 'Cautionary Tales for Grown-Ups' (a book of comic verse) and 'It Wasn't Me' (a book of grumpy complaint).- Actor
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Nick Frost is an English actor, screenwriter and comedian. He is known for his work in the series of British comedic genre films The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy: Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013). He also co-starred in Paul (2011), with frequent collaborator and friend Simon Pegg.
Nicholas John "Nick" Frost is good friends with Simon Pegg and they have appeared alongside each other in several Movies. He resides with his half-Swedish wife, production executive Christina Frostin St Margarets, London. He previously lived in Finsbury Park, which was also the filming location for Shaun of the Dead. In a 2005 interview, Frost stated that he was brought up as a Catholic. He is a supporter of West Ham United, as well as being a rugby player, formerly playing for Barking RFC. On 22 June 2011, Frost's wife gave birth to a son.- Actor
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An only child, Idrissa Akuna Elba was born and raised in London, England. His father, Winston, is from Sierra Leone and worked at Ford Dagenham; his mother, Eve, is from Ghana and had a clerical duty. Idris attended school in Canning Town, where he first became involved in acting, before he dropped out. He gained a place in the National Youth Music Theatre - thanks to a £1,500 Prince's Trust grant. To support himself between acting roles, he worked in jobs such as tyre-fitting, cold call advertising sales, and working night shifts at Ford Dagenham. He worked in nightclubs under the nickname DJ Big Driis at age 19, but began auditioning for television roles in his early-twenties.
His first acting roles were on the soap opera Family Affairs (1997), the television serial Ultraviolet (1998), and the medical drama Dangerfield (1995). His best known roles are as drug baron Russell "Stringer" Bell on the HBO series The Wire (2002), as DCI John Luther on the BBC One series Luther (2010), and as Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He later starred in the films Daddy's Little Girls (2007), Prom Night (2008), RocknRolla (2008), The Unborn (2009) and Obsessed (2009). He also appeared in the films American Gangster (2007), Takers (2010), Thor (2011), Prometheus (2012), Pacific Rim (2013), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Beasts of No Nation (2015) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). He voiced Chief Bogo in Zootopia (2016), Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (2016), and Fluke in Finding Dory (2016).
Idris Elba was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2016 New Years Honours for his services to drama.- Actor
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Paddy (Patrick) Considine was born on September 5, 1973 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire in the U.K. As a teenager, Considine studied a drama course at Burton College where he met with now friend and director Shane Meadows, who cast Considine in his first role in a feature film as the disturbed character Morell in A Room for Romeo Brass (1999).
Considine's performance in that movie got him cast in Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort (2000) the following year. Further roles ensued, including an acclaimed turn as Johnny in Jim Sheridan's In America (2002).
Along with his lead roles, Considine has had a number of scene-stealing supporting roles in films such as 24 Hour Party People (2002), Born Romantic (2000), and The Martins (2001). Considine has been noticed for his performance as Richard the revengeful brother in the applauded film Dead Man's Shoes (2004), which he co-wrote with Shane Meadows, and for his role as Phil the Born again Christian in Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love (2004).
In 2005, Considine co-starred with Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger in Cinderella Man (2005). Other notable roles in recent years include small-but-memorable turns in Hot Fuzz (2007) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), along with bigger roles in [error] and Submarine (2010).
Considine has also recently tried his hand at writing and directing. His feature-length directing debut, Tyrannosaur (2011), won Considine a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer.
Considine has one child, Joseph, with wife Shelley.- Actress
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Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300 (2006), by director Zack Snyder.
Headey was born in Hamilton, Bermuda, to British parents Sue and John Headey. Her father, a Yorkshire police cadet, was stationed in the Bermuda Police Service. She was raised there until age five, when her family returned to England. She was brought up in Yorkshire before moving to London in her teens. Headey had not gone to drama school before she became an actress. At the age of seventeen, Headey's performance in a one-off show in the company of six school friends caught the attention of a casting agent, who took a photo and asked her to audition. Eventually, Headey was cast in Waterland (1992), which became her big-screen debut. She honed her natural acting talent while filming and also took archery classes and horse training. She also took boxing classes in clubs in south London, where a former boxer had been teaching her to spar. During her film career, spanning over 15 years, Headey has shown her range in a variety of roles, playing characters from Amazon-type warriors and action-minded women in The Cave (2005) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), to a lesbian florist in Imagine Me & You (2005).
Headey's film career has taken her all over the world. She was in India for the filming of The Jungle Book (1994), then in St. Petersburg, Russia, for filming Onegin (1999), and in Norway for filming of Aberdeen (2000). In 2005 Headey was filming in Romania and in Mexico, then spent four months in Prague, Czech Republic, where a forest was designed and built for filming The Brothers Grimm (2005), with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. During 2006 Headey was in Canada for the filming of 300 (2006), then went to locations in Bulgaria for shooting The Contractor (2007), and Germany and in Czech Republic for the filming of The Red Baron (2008).
She also played Gina McVey in the horror thriller The Broken (2008), and Elizabeth in Tell Tale (2009). In addition to her film-work, Heady appeared as Sarah Connor in a TV spin-off of the popular "Terminator" film franchise, the FOX's television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008).
Outside of her acting profession, Headey continued taking boxing lessons in London. She is a vegetarian and also remains loyal to yoga, which she discovered during her work in India. She has never been back to her birthplace in Bermuda; she shares her time between her homes in London, England, and Los Angeles, California.- Alex Macqueen was born in 1974 in Epsom, Surrey.
He was in the National Youth Theatre in the 1990's while studying English at Durham University and International Relations at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
He is best known for his roles as Julius Nicholson in 'The Thick of It' and Neil's Dad in 'The Inbetweeners'.
He has worked alongside various Directors including, Woody Allen, Kenneth Branagh, Bryan Singer, Armando Ianucci and Richard Curtis.
In 2011 he was cast by Shane Meadows in 'This Is England 88' and in 2012 took the lead in Sky Atlantic's 'Hunderby' opposite Julia Davis.
In 2013 he was cast as the new 'Master' in the Dr Who Audio series produced by Big Finish.
In 2009 he starred in the film The Hide (2008), directed by Marek Losey and written by Tim Whitnall.
The Hide was described by Film Four as 'a brilliantly balanced understated drama' and by The Times as giving 'Misery and Sleuth a ride for their money'.
The Hide is a psychological thriller set in a bird watchers retreat on the Suffolk marshes, shot in seven days at Pinewood and three on location, and filmed on a micro budget.
Alex Macqueen has also made guest appearances in British comedies including Peep Show (2003), Pulling (2006), The Inbetweeners (2008), Lead Balloon (2006) and The IT Crowd (2006).
He had a long-running part as Dr Keith Greene, an anaesthetist with a dry, sarcastic sense of humour, in Holby City (1999). - Actor
- Executive
- Soundtrack
Shaun was born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, to Ann and Denis Dooley. He is an actor known for Misfits (2009).
He has two younger sisters, Stephanie Dooley and Kimberly Dooley.
Shaun is married to Polly Dooley.
Despite living in London, Shaun still attends all of Barnsley FC's home games.
Shaun won the RTS Northwest award for best actor in the award-winning film The Mark of Cain (2007).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Olivia Colman was born on 30 January 1974 in Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for The Favourite (2018), Tyrannosaur (2011) and The Lost Daughter (2021). She has been married to Ed Sinclair since August 2001. They have three children.- Actor
- Writer
- Composer
Matthew Charles Berry is an English actor, comedian, musician, and writer. He is best known for his roles in comedy series such as The IT Crowd, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box, What We Do in the Shadows, and Toast of London, the last of which he also co-created. The series earned him the 2015 BAFTA Award for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme. As a musician, he has released nine studio albums.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born and raised in London, England. His parents, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch), are both actors. He is a grandson of submarine commander Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, and a great-grandson of diplomat Henry Arnold Cumberbatch CMG. Cumberbatch attended Brambletye School and Harrow School. Whilst at Harrow, he had an arts scholarship and painted large oil canvases. It's also where he began acting. After he finished school, he took a year off to volunteer as an English teacher in a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India. On his return, he studied drama at Manchester University. He continued his training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art graduating with an M.A. in Classical Acting. By the time he had completed his studies, he already had an agent.
Cumberbatch has worked in theatre, television, film and radio. His breakthrough on the big screen came in 2004 when he portrayed Stephen Hawking in the television movie Hawking (2004). In 2010, he became a household name as Sherlock Holmes on the British television series Sherlock (2010). In 2011, he appeared in two Oscar-nominated films - War Horse (2011) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). He followed this with acclaimed roles in the science fiction film Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), the Oscar-winning drama 12 Years a Slave (2013), The Fifth Estate (2013) and August: Osage County (2013). In 2014, he portrayed Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) which earned him a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, British Academy of Film and Television Arts and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Cumberbatch was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2015 Birthday Honours for his services to the performing arts and to charity.
Cumberbatch's engagement to theatre and opera director Sophie Hunter, whom he has known for 17 years, was announced in the "Forthcoming Marriages" section of The Times newspaper on November 5, 2014. On February 14, 2015, the couple married at the 12th century Church of St. Peter and St. Paul on the Isle of Wight followed by a reception at Mottistone Manor. They have three sons, Christopher Carlton (born 2015), Hal Auden (born 2017), and Finn (born 2019).- Genevieve O'Reilly (born 6 January 1977) is an Irish actress known for her work in the Star Wars franchise as Mon Mothma, having portrayed the character in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One, as well as her voice role as Moira in Overwatch.
In television, O'Reilly's first appearance was in 2001 in the Canadian television series BeastMaster as a guest star in "Slayer's Return". The following year O'Reilly appeared in Young Lions as Kimberly Oswald in the episode "Asylum Seekers". O'Reilly then appeared as a prominent character in All Saints from 2002 - 2005 as Leanne Curtis. From 2011 to 2014, O'Reilly appeared in the series Episodes as a recurring character alongside Matt LeBlanc. Later in 2014 O'Reilly starred in the television mini series The Honourable Woman as Frances Pirsig in which she starred in six episodes. In the following year of 2015 O'Reilly starred in the BBC television series Banished as Mary Johnson. In 2016, O'Reilly starred in the British drama The Secret from which she gained acclaim and was reported to play her character "beautifully".
Alongside her appearances in television, O'Reilly is also known for her career in films with her credits in the movie industry notably including the 2004 film Avatar in which she portrayed Dash MacKenzie, the 2009 period drama The Young Victoria in which she played Lady Flora Hastings, and the 2010 romantic movie Forget Me Not where she played Eve. In 2016 O'Reilly appeared in the role of Tarzan's Mother in The Legend of Tarzan.
O'Reilly was born in Dublin, Ireland and raised in Adelaide, Australia. She is the eldest of four siblings. At the age of twenty O'Reilly moved to Sydney to attend the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 2000. In 2005 she moved to the UK with her husband Luke Mulvihill, and lives in London.
O'Reilly was cast as the understudy in director Gale Edwards' production of The White Devil a week after graduating from drama school. She went on to appear in Edwards' Sydney Theatre Company production of The Way of the World. Other theatre credits include The Weir by Conor McPherson, at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and Richard II at the Old Vic. Recent parts at the Royal National Theatre have been in new play, Mike Bartlett's 13, and as Helena, wife to Andrew Scott's emperor Julian in the 2011 production of Ibsen's epic Emperor and Galilean. In July 2012, O'Reilly performed in George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma.
In 2015 she played Kathryn in Splendour by Abi Morgan at the Donmar Warehouse.
In 2017, she played Mary Carney in The Ferryman, first at the Royal Court Theatre and later at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End of London.
O'Reilly has appeared in several productions filmed in Australia, including both The Matrix sequels. She was also in the 2004 Singaporean science fiction film Avatar, playing the lead role of Dash MacKenzie.
In 2005 she played the young Mon Mothma in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (though most of her scenes were ultimately cut). In late 2016, she reprized her role as Mon Mothma in Rogue One, and voiced the same character in the animated TV show Star Wars Rebels in early 2017.
In Australia she starred as Leanne Curtis in the medical drama All Saints.
Since moving to the UK, O'Reilly has starred in the political mini-series The State Within, played Princess Diana in the 2007 television docudrama Diana: Last Days of a Princess, and taken the lead role in The Time of Your Life. She played CIA liaison officer Sarah Caulfield in the eighth series of BBC drama Spooks. O'Reilly also played the character of Michelle Beadley in the remake of The Day of the Triffids that aired on BBC One in December 2009.
She appeared in all 3 seasons of the BBC/Showtime comedy Episodes from 2011 to 2014, playing Jamie Lapidus, the blind wife of a TV executive, Merc Lapidus.
In June 2013, O'Reilly appeared in the pilot episode of the international crime drama Crossing Lines cast as detective and interrogation specialist Sienna Pride, attached to the ICC team from Britain's Scotland Yard.
In early 2015, O'Reilly starred as Mary Johnson in Jimmy McGovern's Banished, a television drama focusing on British convicts in an Australian penal colony.
In 2015, O'Reilly starred as Dr Elishia McKellar, in an Australian paranormal drama Glitch, set in fictional small country town called Yoorana. Series 1 with 6 episodes won major awards. Series 2 was broadcast on ABC1 and Netflix toward the end of 2017. - Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom was born on January 13, 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Bloom (née Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, to an English family then-resident there. The man he first knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa. But Harry died of a stroke when Orlando was only four years old. After that, Orlando and his older sister, Samantha Bloom, were raised by their mother and family friend, Colin Stone. When Orlando was 13, Sonia revealed to him that Colin is actually the biological father of Orlando and his sister; the two were conceived after an agreement by his parents, since Harry, who suffered a stroke in 1975, was unable to have children.
Orlando attended St. Edmund's School in Canterbury but struggled in many courses because of dyslexia. He did embrace the arts, however, and enjoyed pottery, photography and sculpturing. He also participated in school plays and was active at his local theater. As a teen, Orlando landed his first job: he was a clay trapper at a pigeon shooting range. Encouraged by his mother, he and his sister began studying poetry and prose, eventually giving readings at Kent Festival. Orlando and Samantha won many poetry and Bible reciting competitions. Then Orlando, who always idolized larger-than-life characters, gravitated towards serious acting. At the age of 16, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and gaining a scholarship to train with the British American Drama Academy. Like many young actors, he also auditioned for a number of television roles to further his career, landing bit parts in British television shows Casualty (1986), Midsomer Murders (1997) and Smack the Pony (1999). He also appeared in the critically acclaimed movie Wilde (1997).
He then attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was there, in 1998, that Orlando fell three stories from a rooftop terrace and broke his back. Despite fears that he would be permanently paralyzed, he quickly recovered and returned to the stage. As fate would have it, seated in the audience one night in 1999 was a director named Peter Jackson. After the show, he met with Orlando and asked him to audition for his new set of movies. After graduating from Guildhall, Orlando began work on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, spending 18 months in New Zealand bringing to life "Legolas", a part which made him a household name. Today, he is one of the busiest and most sought-after actors in the industry.- Actor
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With his breakthrough performance as Eames in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller Inception (2010), English actor Tom Hardy has been brought to the attention of mainstream audiences worldwide. However, the versatile actor has been steadily working on both stage and screen since his television debut in the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). After being cast in the World War II drama, Hardy left his studies at the prestigious Drama Centre in London and was subsequently cast as Twombly in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001) and as the villain Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).
Edward Thomas Hardy was born on September 15, 1977 in Hammersmith, London; his mother, Elizabeth Anne (Barrett), is an artist and painter, and his father, Chips Hardy, is a writer. He is of English and Irish descent. Hardy was brought up in East Sheen, London, and first studied at Reed's School. His education continued at Tower House School, then at Richmond Drama School, and subsequently at the Drama Centre London, along with fellow Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender. After winning a modeling competition at age 21, he had a brief contract with the agency Models One.
Tom spent his teens and early twenties battling delinquency, alcoholism and drug addiction; after completing his work on Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), he sought treatment and has also admitted that his battles with addiction ended his five-year marriage to Sarah Ward. Returning to work in 2003, Hardy was awarded the Evening Standard Most Promising Newcomer Award for his theatre performances in the productions of "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Blood". In 2003, Tom also co-starred in the play "The Modernists" with Paul Popplewell, Jesse Spencer and Orlando Wells.
During the next five years, Hardy worked consistently in film, television and theatre, playing roles as varied as Robert Dudley in the BBC's The Virgin Queen (2005), Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist (2007) and starring in "The Man of Mode" at the National Theatre. On the silver screen, he appeared in the crime thriller Layer Cake (2004) with Daniel Craig, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), and the romp Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006).
In 2006, Hardy created "Shotgun", an underground theatre company along with director Robert Delamere, and directed a play, penned by his father for the company, called "Blue on Blue". In 2007, Hardy received a best actor BAFTA nomination for his touching performance as Stuart Shorter in the BBC adaptation of Alexander Masters' bestselling biography Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007). Hailed for his transformative character acting, Hardy was lauded for his emotionally and physically convincing portrayal in the ill-fated and warmhearted tale of Shorter, a homeless and occasionally violent man suffering from addiction and muscular dystrophy.
The following year, he appeared as gay hoodlum Handsome Bob in the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla (2008), but this would be his next transformation that would prove his extensive range and stun critics. In the film Bronson (2008), Hardy played the notorious Charles Bronson (given name, Michael Peterson), the "most violent prisoner in Britain". Bald, pumped-up, and outfitted with Bronson's signature strongman mustache, Hardy is unrecognizable and gives a harrowing performance that is physically fearless and psychologically unsettling. Director Nicolas Winding Refn breaks the fourth wall with Hardy retelling his tales directly to viewers as well as performing them outright before an audience of his own imagining. The performance mixes terrifying brutality, vaudevillian showmanship, wry humor, and an alarming amount of commitment, and won Hardy a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor. The performance got Hollywood's attention, and in 2009, Hardy was named one of Variety's "10 Actors to Watch". That year, he continued to garner praise for his starring role in The Take (2009), a four-part adaptation of Martina Cole's bestselling crime novel, as well as for his performance as Heathcliff in a version of Wuthering Heights (2009).
Recent work includes the aforementioned breakthrough appearance in Inception (2010) alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Elliot Page. The movie was released in July 2010 and became one of top 25 highest grossing films of all time, collecting eight Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and winning four.
Other films include Warrior (2011), opposite Joel Edgerton, the story of two estranged brothers facing the fight of a lifetime from director Gavin O'Connor, and This Means War (2012), directed by McG and co-starring Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine. Tom also starred in the heralded Cold War thriller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) with Colin Firth and Gary Oldman. Hardy rejoined Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight Rises (2012); he played the villain role of Bane opposite Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman. Hardy's menacing physique and his character's scrambled, hard-to-distinguish voice became a major discussion point as the film was released.
Outside of performing, Hardy is the patron for the charity "Flack", which is an organization to aid the recovery of the homeless in Cambridge. And in 2010, Hardy was named an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust, which helps disadvantaged youth. On the recent stage, he starred in the Brett C. Leonard play "The Long Red Road" in early 2010. Written for Hardy and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the play was staged at Chicago's Goodman Theater.
In 2015, Hardy starred as the iconic Mad Max in George Miller's reboot of his franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). He also collected a British Independent Film Award for his portrayal of both the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, in Legend (2015), and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as John Fitzgerald in The Revenant (2015). Hardy also starred on the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013), alongside Cillian Murphy, and on the television series Taboo (2017), both created by Steven Knight.
He has an outlaw biker story among other projects in development. In 2010, Hardy became engaged to fellow English actress Charlotte Riley, whom he starred with in The Take (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2009), and is raising a young son, Louis Thomas Hardy, with ex-girlfriend Rachael Speed. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama.- Actress
- Writer
Eve Myles was born on 26 July 1978 in Ystradgynlais, Wales, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Torchwood (2006), Dragon Age II (2011) and Keeping Faith (2017). She has been married to Bradley Freegard since 18 May 2013. They have two children.- Actress
- Casting Department
- Producer
London-based Gwendoline Christie is one of the most exciting and unique British actresses working today, having caught the industry's attention with her Emmy and Critics' Choice nominated role in the global hit HBO series "Game of Thrones." During her time on the show, she was also nominated alongside the rest of the cast for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020.
Christie joined "Game of Thrones" in 2012 during the show's second season and was nominated in 2019 for an Emmy and Critics' Choice Award for Supporting Actress, Drama Series for her iconic role as the warrior Brienne of Tarth. Most recently, Christie can be seen as principal of Nevermore Academy Larissa Weems in Tim Burton's Netflix series "Wednesday" alongside Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Adams and Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams. The show debuted at #1 on Netflix in 83 countries around the world and set the record for most hours viewed in a week for an english-language series on the streaming platform. Christie can also be seen as Lucifer in Netflix's "The Sandman" based on Neil Gaiman's DC Comics series. The show debuted at #1 on Netflix's Top 10 rankings the week of its release. Christie also starred in Peter Strickland's "Flux Gourmet" which was released in June 2022 and was nominated for seven British Independent Film Awards including Best Ensemble.
In the summer of 2019, Christie played Titania in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bridge Theatre in London. She appeared in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's "The Friend", alongside Jason Segel and Dakota Johnson, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. In January 2020, she appeared in the film adaptation of Charles Dickens' "The Personal History of David Copperfield", alongside Dev Patel and Tilda Swinton.
In 2018, Christie appeared in the Robert Zemeckis film "The Women of Marwen" alongside Steve Carell and Diane Kruger. She also starred in Peter Strickland's film "In Fabric", which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018.
In 2017, Christie starred alongside Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Moss in the second season of director Jane Campion's Sundance show "Top of the Lake: China Girl." The show received rave reviews and a 2018 Golden Globe nomination for Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. That same year, Christie was seen in the highly anticipated film "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi". The film was directed by Rian Johnson and Christie returned as the franchise's first female villain, Captain Phasma, alongside Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. Christie first appeared in the beloved sci-fi franchise by starring in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens" (2015) alongside John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o and Domhnall Gleeson, who joined the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker.
Christie's notable theatre credits include: Doctor Fauster in 2010 playing the role of Lucifer as well as the Theatre Royal Haymarket's Breakfast at Tiffany's as Mag Wildwood in 2009 and the Queen in Shakespeare's romance Cymbeline in 2007. Her feature film debut came in 2009 with a supporting role in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", directed by Terry Gilliam who she worked with again in "Zero Theorem". Additional film credits include Fox's The Darkest Minds and "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2".
Christie graduated from Drama Centre London in 2005 and has also modelled for several fashion houses over the years.- Freema Agyeman is a British actress who is known for playing Martha Jones in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who (2007-2010), Alesha Phillips in crime procedural drama Law & Order: UK (2009-2011), Amanita Caplan in the Netflix science fiction drama Sense8 (2015-2018), and Dr. Helen Sharpe in the NBC medical procedural series New Amsterdam (2018-2022).
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McAvoy was born on 21 April 1979 in Glasgow, Scotland, to James, a bus driver, and Elizabeth (née Johnstone), a nurse. He was raised on a housing estate in Drumchapel, Glasgow by his maternal grandparents (James, a butcher, and Mary), after his parents divorced when James was 11. He went to St Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Jordanhill, Glasgow, where he did well enough and started 'a little school band with a couple of mates'.
McAvoy toyed with the idea of the Catholic priesthood as a child but, when he was 16, a visit to the school by actor David Hayman sparked an interest in acting. Hayman offered him a part in his film The Near Room (1995) but despite enjoying the experience McAvoy didn't seriously consider acting as a career, although he did continue to act as a member of PACE Youth Theatre. He applied instead to the Royal Navy and had already been accepted when he was also offered a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD).
He took the place at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and, when he graduated in 2000, he moved to London. He had already made a couple of TV appearances by this time and continued to get a steady stream of TV and movie work until he came to attention of the British public in 2004 playing car thief Steve McBride in the successful UK TV series Shameless (2004) and then to the rest of the world in 2005 as Mr Tumnus, the faun, in Disney's adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). In The Last King of Scotland (2006) McAvoy portrayed a Scottish doctor who becomes the personal physician to dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker. McAvoy's career breakthrough came in Atonement (2007), Joe Wright's 2007 adaption of Ian McEwan's novel.
Since then, McAvoy has taken on theatre roles, starring in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' (directed by Jamie Lloyd), which launched the first Trafalgar Transformed season in London's West End and earned him an Olivier award nomination for Best Actor. In January 2015, McAvoy returned to the Trafalgar Studios stage to play Jack Gurney, the delusional 14th Earl of Gurney who believes he is Jesus, in the first revival of Peter Barnes's satire 'The Ruling Class', a role for which he was subsequently awarded the London Evening Standard Theatre Award's Best Actor.
On screen, McAvoy has appeared as corrupt cop Bruce Robertson in Filth (2013), a part for which he received a Scottish BAFTA for Best Actor, a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor, a London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year and an Empire Award for Best Actor. More recently, he reprised his role as Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019). He began his depiction of Kevin Wendell Crumb, also known as The Horde, a man with an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Split (2016) and continued it in the sequel, Glass (2019). Also in 2019, he played Bill Denbrough in It Chapter Two (2019), the horror sequel to It (2017).
McAvoy and Jamie Lloyd look set to continue their collaboration in December 2019, with a production of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End, London. The project has been on the cards as long ago as 2017, when McAvoy posted a picture of him reading the script and wearing a false nose.- Actor
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Thomas William Hiddleston was born in Westminster, London, to English-born Diana Patricia (Servaes) and Scottish-born James Norman Hiddleston. His mother is a former stage manager, and his father, a scientist, was the managing director of a pharmaceutical company. He started off at the preparatory school, The Dragon School in Oxford, and by the time he was 13, he boarded at Eton College, at the same time that his parents were going through a divorce. He continued on to the University of Cambridge, where he earned a double first in Classics. He continued to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he graduated in 2005.
Whilst at University of Cambridge, he was seen by the Hamilton Hodell agency in the play "A Streetcar Named Desire" and was signed. Following this, he was cast in his first television role in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001). Hiddleston won his first film role as Oakley in Joanna Hogg's award-winning first feature, Unrelated (2007). His breakthrough role came when he portrayed the nemesis Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe feature film Thor (2011). He reprised the character in The Avengers (2012), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
He has also appeared in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Woody Allen's romantic comedy Midnight in Paris (2011), and the romantic vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). On television, he appeared on the BBC series The Hollow Crown (2012), in the adaptations of Shakespeare's "Henry IV" and "Henry V". In theatre, he has been in the productions of "Cymbeline" (2007) and "Ivanov" (2008). In December 2013, he starred as the title character in the Donmar Warehouse production of "Coriolanus" which played until February 2014. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer in a Play for his role in "Cymbeline" while also being nominated for the same award the same year for his role as Cassio in "Othello".- Gemma Elizabeth Whelan (born April 23, 1981) is an English actress and comedian, best known for playing Yara Greyjoy in the HBO fantasy-drama series Game of Thrones.
Whelan attended The King's High School for Girls in Warwick. In addition to being an actor and comedian, Whelan is also a professional dancer specializing in the tap and jazz dance styles. She is a member of the dance troupe the Beaux Belles, based in London. She is also trained in musical theatre and has a mezzo-soprano singing voice. Whelan can speak conversational Spanish. She lives in London. In July 2017, she was expecting her first child with husband Gerry. She gave birth to their daughter a few months later.
Whelan is vegetarian but had eaten meat on the sets of Game of Thrones.
As a comedian, Whelan won the Funny Women Variety Award for stand-up comedy in 2010. She often performs stand-up in character as Chastity Butterworth and in 2014 she recorded a pilot chat show for BBC Radio 4 called The Chastity Butterworth Show.
On screen, she has played supporting roles in several films and TV shows, including in the 2010 films Gulliver's Travels and The Wolfman. She has had roles in comedies including Upstart Crow, Uncle and The Agency.
In August 2011, she was cast as Yara Greyjoy in the HBO fantasy-drama television series Game of Thrones, and appeared as a recurring cast member from the second season onward. - Actress
- Producer
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Natalie Dormer born February 11, 1982 is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Anne Boleyn on the Showtime series The Tudors (2007-10), as Margaery Tyrell on the HBO series Game of Thrones (2012-14), Irene Adler on the CBS series Elementary (2013-15), and as Cressida in the science-fiction adventure films The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) and Part 2 (2015). She has been nominated for Best Performance at the Gemini Awards for her work in The Tudors. She has also been nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award for her performance in Game of Thrones.- Actor
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- Music Department
Thomas Arthur Darvill, known professionally as Arthur Darvill, is an English actor and musician. He is perhaps most recognized as Rory Williams, one of the Eleventh Doctor's companions in Doctor Who (2005), and as Rev. Paul Coates in Broadchurch (2013). In 2013-2014 he appeared in the lead role in the theatre musical Once in the West End and on Broadway. Darvill's mother Ellie Darvill is an actress and during Arthur's early childhood she worked with masks, puppets and live acting as a member of Cannon Hill Theatre, which was based at Midlands Arts Centre, and toured Britain and the world. She is also known as the puppeteer and voice behind Why Bird from Playdays. Prior to the birth of his sister, Darvill went on some of the tours, helping with the setting up of the shows. His father Nigel played the Hammond organ for artists including Edwin Starr, Ruby Turner, Fine Young Cannibals and UB40. Darvill attended Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire from 1993 to 2000.- Actress
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
Jodie Whittaker came to prominence after her breakout performance in Venus (2006), which was met with a string of nominations, including British Independent Film Award and Satellite Award nominations for "Most Promising Newcomer" and "Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical." Whittaker has also received critical acclaim for her performances in Journeyman (2017), Adult Life Skills (2016), and Broadchurch (2013), and also starred in Wired (2008), Attack the Block (2011), Good Vibrations (2012), and Trust Me (2017).
In 2017 she made history as the thirteenth actor and first woman to play the Doctor in Doctor Who (2005). She made her onscreen debut as the Doctor on December 25, 2017, in the episode titled Twice Upon a Time (2017). Her casting was met with overwhelming acclaim and positivity, and in 2020 she was voted the second greatest Doctor in the programme's 57-year history, only losing narrowly to David Tennant.- Actor
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Matt Smith is an English actor who shot to fame in the UK aged 26 when he was cast by producer Steven Moffat as the Eleventh Doctor in the BBC's iconic science-fiction adventure series Doctor Who (2005).
Matthew Robert Smith was born and raised in Northampton, the son of Lynne (Fidler) and David Smith. He was educated at Northampton School For Boys. He studied Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He got into acting through the National Youth Theatre and performed with the Royal Court and the National Theatre.
Smith made his television debut in The Ruby in the Smoke (2006) and won several further roles on television but was largely unknown when he was announced as the surprise choice for the role of the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who. He was younger than any other actor to have taken the role (Peter Davison was previously the youngest, aged 29 when he was cast in 1981). Smith starred in 49 episodes of Doctor Who (three short of his predecessor, David Tennant). He left in the momentous 50th anniversary year of the Doctor Who legend in 2013, which included starring in the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor (2013), which found him acting with Tennant, guest star John Hurt and the oldest living and longest-serving actor to play the Doctor, Tom Baker.
Since leaving Doctor Who, Smith has launched himself into a film career.- Actor
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Riz Ahmed (born 1 December 1982), also known by his stage name Riz MC and birth name Rizwan Ahmed, is a British Pakistani actor, rapper, and activist. As an actor, he has won one Emmy Award, out of two Emmy nominations, and was also nominated for a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, and three British Independent Film Awards.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Felicity Rose Hadley Jones is an English actress and producer. Jones started her professional acting career as a child, appearing at age 12 in The Treasure Seekers (1996). She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one series in the television show The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College. After Kings Norton Girls School, Jones attended King Edward VI Handsworth School, to complete A Levels and went on to take a gap year (during which she appeared in the BBC series Servants (2003)). She took time off from acting to attend school during her formative years, and has worked steadily since she graduated with a 2:1 from Wadham College, Oxford in 2006, where she read English. While studying English, she appeared in student plays, including Attis in which she played the title role, and, in 2005, Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" for the OUDS summer tour to Japan, starring alongside Harry Lloyd.
On radio, she is known for playing the long-running role of Emma Grundy in The Archers. In 2008, she appeared in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden. Since 2006, Jones has appeared in numerous films, including Northanger Abbey (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008), Chéri (2009), and The Tempest (2010). She stars in Star Wars spin-off Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) as Jyn Erso. Her performance in the 2011 film Like Crazy (2011) was met with critical acclaim garnering her numerous awards, including a special jury prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In 2014, her performance as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014) was also met with critical acclaim, garnering her nominations for the Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 2019, Jones founded her own production company, Piecrust Productions with her brother, Alex Jones.- Actor
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Sacha Dhawan was born in Bramhall, Stockport to Hindu parents though he attended a Roman Catholic secondary school, Thomas Aquinas College, in nearby Stockport. There one of the authors he studied for his final exams was Alan Bennett, by whom he was very impressed. He began as a child actor at the age of 12 and attended the Laine-Johnson School of Acting in Manchester. He is also an accomplished tap-dancer. His enthusiasm for Bennett was such that when auditioning for his play 'The History Boys' on the London stage, Sacha impressed the author not just with his acting but by reciting a poem he had composed about the play and its author. He has appeared in stage versions of 'The History Boys' around the world as well as in the 2006 film adaptation. On television he appeared in two high profile series 'In the Club' as an expectant father and 'Last Tango in Halifax' as a toy boy.- Actress
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Natalia Gastiain Tena is an English actress and musician. She played Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter film series, and the wildling Osha in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011).
Tena is also the lead singer and accordionist of Molotov Jukebox. The band released their debut album Carnival Flower (2014), in Spring 2014, featuring their single "Neon Lights". Their second studio album, Tropical Gypsy (2016), was released on 15 April 2016 and was preceded by its lead single, "Pineapple Girl". It was promoted on the band's Tropical Gypsy Tour in April and May 2016.- Actor
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Iwan Rheon (born 13 May 1985) is a Welsh actor, singer and musician, best known for portraying Ramsay Bolton in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011), Simon Bellamy in the E4 series Misfits (2009) and Ash Weston in the ITV sitcom Vicious (2013).
Rheon was born in Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire. When he was five years old, his family moved to Cardiff. He attended Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf where he began acting in school drama productions at age 17. He was later spotted at a National Eisteddfod of Wales, before studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
At age 17, Rheon joined Welsh language soap Pobol Y Cwm, in which he originated the role of Macsen White, but later left to train at LAMDA. His first notable stage part came in Eight Miles High, which was staged in 2008 at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.
Also in 2008, he was cast as the haunted Moritz Stiefel in the London production of the Tony Award-winning rock-musical, Spring Awakening. He played this role from January 2009 at the Lyric Hammersmith and continued when the show was transferred to the Novello Theatre, until it closed in May 2009, five months earlier than planned. He earned a What's on Stage Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, which was eventually won by Oliver Thornton (Priscilla Queen of the Desert). For his performance he won the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical at the 2010 Olivier Awards. Immediately after Spring Awakening, Rheon was cast in the E4 channel's Misfits, a BAFTA winning program that was described by 247 Magazine as "a mix of Skins and Heroes". He plays nervous, shy Simon Bellamy, who gains the superpower of invisibility and precognition in season 3. On 20 December 2011, Rheon announced via Twitter that he had left the show, along with fellow cast member Antonia Thomas.
In 2011 he also appeared in the final episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl. In 2011, he was nominated for a Golden Nymph in the "Outstanding Actor - Drama Series" category for his role in Misfits as Simon Bellamy. Rheon also made two guest appearances as the character Ben Theodore in Simon Amstell's comedy Grandma's House.
In early 2012, Rheon filmed the crime heist drama The Rise. In spring 2012, he began shooting Libertador in Venezuela and Spain. He plays Daniel O'Leary. In May 2012, it was announced that he had signed on to the gritty drama Driven.
In 2013, Rheon was cast as the villainous psychopath Ramsay Bolton in the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the DVD commentary for the series' third season, producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss mentioned that Rheon previously auditioned for the role of Jon Snow in the first season, but lost to Kit Harington, with whom Rheon maintains a close friendship. Due to the vile nature of Bolton's character Rheon said that Bolton deserved his gruesome death in the series, in which he was eaten alive by dogs. He also portrays Ash Weston in the ITV sitcom Vicious.
In 2013, Rheon played a lead role in the philosophical radio play, Darkside, based on the themes of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon album.
In September 2014, Rheon joined the cast of BBC One's Our Girl as Dylan "Smurf" Smith.
Songwriting and singing since the age of 16, Rheon was lead singer in The Convictions until leaving the band to pursue his acting career. In 2010, he recorded his first solo work, Tongue Tied EP, at RAK Studios in London, produced by Jonathan Quarmby and Kevin Bacon. The EP, a four track release with acoustic guitar and voice, was released digitally in June 2010.
He returned to RAK Studios, in April 2011, to record his second EP Changing Times, again produced by Quarmby and Bacon, with the addition of three backing musicians. Changing Times was released on 10 October 2011.
On 7 April 2013, Rheon released his third EP Bang! Bang! and on 9 April 2013, released the music video for the title track.
Rheon recorded his first album Dinard at RAK Studios in London and Ty Cerdd Studios in Wales. The album was released in April 2015.
Rheon is fluent in Welsh and English, with the former being his first language. His older brother, Aled is a musician; the two performed together on the 2015 single "Rhodd".- Actress
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Carey Hannah Mulligan is a British actress. She was born May 28, 1985, in Westminster, London, England, to Nano (Booth), a university lecturer, and Stephen Mulligan, a hotel manager. Her mother is from Llandeilo, Wales, and Carey also has Irish and English ancestry.
Her first major appearance was playing Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (2005) alongside Keira Knightley, Judi Dench, and Donald Sutherland. Carey also played orphan Ada Clare in the BBC television series Bleak House (2005).
Carey has said that her passion and love for acting was first kindled at her old school Woldingham School, where she took part in a school production of "Sweet Charity" in her final year, and where she was also a student head of drama.
Carey is married to musician Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons.- Actress
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Jenna Coleman is best known for her BAFTA-nominated performance as Clara in 'Doctor Who' and for playing the title role in ITV's Emmy-nominated series 'Victoria'. She was most recently seen in a lead role as Marie-Andrée Leclerc in the dark crime drama 'The Serpent' for BBC and Netflix opposite Tahar Rahim, and in the critically acclaimed miniseries 'The Cry' for the BBC/Sundance. On-stage, she was most recently seen at The Old Vic in 'All My Sons' alongside Bill Pullman and Sally Field. Upcoming is Neil Maskell's feature debut 'Klokkenluider' and Warner Brothers'/Netflix anticipated series, 'The Sandman' as Johanna Constantine- Actor
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Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson was born May 13, 1986 in London, England, to Richard Pattinson, a car dealer importing vintage cars, and Clare Pattinson (née Charlton), who worked as a booker at a model agency. He grew up in Barnes, southwest London with two older sisters. Robert discovered his love for music long before acting and started learning the guitar and piano at the age of four. He became a big cinephile for love of auteur cinema in his early teens and preferred to watch films rather than doing his homework. In his late teens and early twenties, he used to perform solo acoustic guitar gigs at open mic nights in bars and pubs around London where he sung his own written songs. Thinking about becoming a musician or going to university to study speech-writing, he never thought about pursuing an acting career and his drama teacher in school even advised him not to join the drama club because she thought he wasn't made for the creative subjects. But as a teenager, he joined the local amateur theatre club after his father convinced him to attend because he was quite shy. At age 15 and after two years of working backstage, he auditioned for the play 'Guys and Dolls' and he got his first role as a Cuban dancer with no lines. He got the lead part in the next play 'Our Town', was spotted by a talent agent who was sitting in the audience and he began looking for professional roles.
His first screen role was a small part in Vanity Fair (2004), but he'd been cut out of the final film and didn't know about it until he attended the premiere. The casting director felt so guilty for not telling him, that she got him the audition for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). He was lucky and succeeded in gaining the role of Cedric Diggory, which brought him to a wider audience at the age of 19 and he continued to star in mostly smaller British TV productions. Hollywood expressed only mild interest in him and he was still debating whether or not he wished to pursue acting. Throughout that period, Pattinson would occasionally send audition tapes for roles in America. One, for a rom-com, led to the opportunity for an in-person audition in Los Angeles. That audition did not pan out, but while in town he went in for another, with Thirteen (2003) director Catherine Hardwicke, for a part in what he understood to be an indie movie based on a low-profile book about a vampire. Being the last one out of 3000 male actors to audition for the part, the role of Edward Cullen in the film adaptations of the Twilight novels written by Stephenie Meyer brought him to unexpected worldwide stardom at age 22 and the five films between 2008 and 2012 grossed over $3.3 billion in worldwide receipts. Between the Twilight Saga films, he also starred in Remember Me (2010), Water for Elephants (2011) and Bel Ami (2012).
Pattinson's Twilight-era was surreal. He had been catapulted onto Hollywood's A-list as a heartthrob, but also experienced certain preconceptions about what he wanted - or was capable of doing - as an actor. That changed with an unexpected straight offer from auteur director David Cronenberg to star in Cosmopolis (2012), which he described as an eye-opening experience: It reminded him of his love for cinema, why he wanted to become an actor in the first place and solidified his foremost desire for the coming years to work with great filmmakers. With Pattinson being a big cinephile, he since then starred in mostly independent films from respected auteur directors, such as The Rover (2014), Maps to the Stars (2014), Life (2015), Queen of the Desert (2015) and The Childhood of a Leader (2015). His unrecognizable role as an explorer in the amazon jungle in The Lost City of Z (2016) from director James Gray brought him much critical acclaim. His transformation to a sleazy, manic conman in the gritty crime thriller Good Time (2017) earned a six-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and brought him a nomination for Best Actor at the Independent Spirit Awards. It was a major step for his transition into a character actor with incredible range, with critics calling his performance a revelation and career-defining. He starred in the western-comedy Damsel (2018) as a cowboy with sociopathic characteristics and played a convict sent to space for sexual experimentation in the psychological mystery drama High Life (2018) from acclaimed French auteur director Claire Denis. He returned to work with director David Michôd in The King (2019) and starred in the black-and-white fantasy-horror movie The Lighthouse (2019) from director Robert Eggers, which earned him his second Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actor. In Netflix's The Devil All the Time (2020), Pattinson played a corrupt preacher preying on young girls.
He returned to mainstream films with a leading role in Christopher Nolan's time bending spy film Tenet (2020) and will star as the DC Comics superhero Batman in Matt Reeves' film The Batman (2022).- Actress
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British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age of 3, her passion for acting began. From 2000 to 2005, she attended St. Edward's School of Oxford, where she appeared in two school plays. She went on to study acting at the prestigious Drama Centre London, where she took part in 10 plays. During this time, Emilia first appeared on television with a guest role in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000).
In 2010, after graduating from the Drama Centre London, Emilia got her first film role in the television movie Triassic Attack (2010). In 2011, her breakthrough role came in when she replaced fellow newcomer Tamzin Merchant on Game of Thrones (2011) after the filming of the original pilot episode. From March to April 2013, she played Holly Golightly in a Broadway production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". She played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys (2015), opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke. She played the lead role of Louisa Clark in the romantic comedy blockbuster Me Before You (2016) and went on to star in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra.
Since her rise to prominence, Emilia has contributed to various charitable organisations. In 2018, she was named as the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing because of her efforts in raising awareness about the working condition of the nurses in the UK. In 2019, she was named as the first ambassador for the global Nursing Now campaign. In 2019, in a personal essay published in The New Yorker, Emilia revealed that she had suffered from two life threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013. She launched her own charity SameYou in 2019, which aims to broaden neurorehabilitation access for young people after a brain injury or stroke.- Actor
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Kit Harington was born Christopher Catesby Harington in Acton, London, to Deborah Jane (Catesby), a former playwright, and David Richard Harington, a businessman. His mother named him after 16th-century British playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe, whose first name was shortened to Kit, a name Harington prefers. Harington's uncle is Sir Nicholas John Harington, the 14th Baronet Harington, and his paternal great-grandfather was Sir Richard Harington, the 12th Baronet Harington. Through his paternal grandmother, Lavender Cecilia Denny, Kit's eight times great-grandfather was King Charles II of England. Also through his father, Harington descends from politician Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, the bacon merchant T. A. Denny, clergyman Baptist Wriothesley Noel, merchant and politician Peter Baillie, peer William Legge, 4th Earl of Dartmouth, and MP Sir William Molesworth, 6th Baronet.
Harington was a pupil at the Southfield Primary School from 1992 to 1998. When he was 11, his family moved to Worcestershire, and he studied at the Chantry High School in Martley until 2003. He became interested in acting after watching a production of Waiting for Godot when he was 14, and he performed in several school productions. He attended Worcester Sixth Form College, where he studied Drama and Theatre Studies, between 2003 and 2005. When he was 17, he was inspired to study acting in a drama school after watching a performance by Ben Whishaw playing Hamlet in 2004. He moved back to London when he was eighteen and a year later attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, from which he graduated in 2008.- Faye Marsay was born on 30 December 1986 in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Game of Thrones (2011), Pride (2014) and Andor (2022).
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Pearl Mackie was born on 29 May 1987 in Brixton, London, England, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Doctor Who (2005), Horizon Line (2020) and The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021).- Actor
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Joseph Maxwell Dempsie is an English actor, best known for his roles as Chris Miles in the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins (2007-2008) and Gendry Baratheon in Game of Thrones (2011-2013; 2017-2019). Dempsie's earlier acting credits include the medical dramas Peak Practice (2000), Doctors (2001-2003), and Sweet Medicine (2003), as well as the films One for the Road and Heartlands (2003). He also appeared in This is England '86 (2010) and This is England '90 (2015), Born and Bred, a BBC documentary-drama about Tony Martin, and as the villainous John in The Fades (2011).- Actress
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Karen Sheila Gillan was born and raised in Inverness, Scotland, as the only child of Marie Paterson and husband John Gillan, who is a singer and recording artist. She developed a love for acting very early on, attending several youth theatre groups and taking part in a wide range of productions at her school, Charleston Academy.
At age 16, Karen decided she wanted to pursue her acting career further and, studied under the renowned theatre director Scott Johnston at the Performing Arts Studio Scotland. She later attended the prestigious Italia Conti Academy in London. During her first year, she landed a role on Rebus (2000) and soon appeared in a variety of programs including Channel 4's Stacked (2008) and The Kevin Bishop Show (2008), as well as a two-year stint on the long-running series Doctor Who (2005). Karen also stars in the film Outcast (2010), starring James Nesbitt. Her most recent starring role is as Eliza Dooley on the situation comedy Selfie (2014).- Actor
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Daniel Kaluuya is a British actor and writer. He is best known for Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018) and for portraying Fred Hampton in Judas & The Black Messiah (2021).
He had a supporting role in Sicario (2015).
He also starred in the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits".
For his work in Get Out he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Kaluuya also had minor roles in Johnny English Reborn (2011) and Kick-Ass 2 (2013).
His film debut was Shoot the Messenger (2006).- Actress
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Nathalie Emmanuel is an English actress, known for her role as Missandei on the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2011) and Ramsey in Furious 7 (2015).
Nathalie was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, to a father of Saint Lucian and English descent and a mother of Dominican origin. Nathalie credits her mother for the initial motivation to become an actress. At the age of 10, she played Young Nala in the West End production of The Lion King. In 2006, she made her television break by starring as Sasha Valentine in the teen soap opera Hollyoaks (1995). Emmanuel appeared on the show until 2010, her character's story-lines included prostitution, and heroin addiction.
Nathalie presented BBC Three's Web-sex: What's the Harm?, investigating the online sexual habits of 16-24 year-old in the UK. Later in the same year she made her film debut in the thriller Twenty8. The following year, she was cast as Missandei, Daenerys Targaryen's translator, in HBO's fantasy drama series Game of Thrones (2011). In 2015, Emmanuel was promoted to a regular cast member on the show. In the same year, she played computer hacker Ramsey in the action film Furious 7 (2015) and Harriet in the sci-fi sequel Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015).
FHM magazine ranked Emmanuel as 99th in their 100 Sexiest Women of 2013. In 2015, she appeared in the April issues of InStyle and GQ magazines.- Actor
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Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born on July 23, 1989 in Fulham, London, England, to casting agent Marcia Gresham (née Jacobson) and literary agent Alan Radcliffe. His father is from a Northern Irish Protestant background, while his mother was born in South Africa, to a Jewish family (from Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Germany). Daniel began performing in small school productions as a young boy. Soon enough, he landed a role in David Copperfield (1999), as the young David Copperfield. A couple of years later, he landed a role as Mark Pendel in The Tailor of Panama (2001), the son of Harry and Louisa Pendel (Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis). Curtis had indeed pointed out to Daniel's mother that he could be Harry Potter himself. Soon afterwards, Daniel was cast as Harry Potter by director, Chris Columbus in the film that hit theaters in November 16, 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001). He was recognized worldwide after this film was released. Pleasing audiences and critics everywhere, filming on its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), commenced shortly afterwards. He appeared again as Harry in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and then appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) directed by Mike Newell. Shortly afterwards, he finished filming December Boys (2007) in Adelaide, Australia, Kangaroo Island, and Geelong, Australia which began on the 14 November 2005 and ended sometime in December. On January 27, 2006, he attended the South Bank Awards Show to present the award for "Breakthrough Artist of the Year" to Billie Piper. Daniel reprised his famous character once again for the next installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). In February 2007, he took on his first stage role in the West End play Equus, to worldwide praise from fans and critics alike. Also that year, he starred in the television movie My Boy Jack (2007), which aired on 11 November 2007 in the UK.
After voicing a character in an episode of the animated television series The Simpsons in late 2010, Radcliffe debuted as J. Pierrepont Finch in the 2011 Broadway revival How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a role previously held by Broadway veterans Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick. Other cast members included John Larroquette, Rose Hemingway and Mary Faber. Both the actor and production received good reviews, with USA Today commenting: "Radcliffe ultimately succeeds not by overshadowing his fellow cast members, but by working in conscientious harmony with them - and having a blast in the process." Radcliffe's performance in the show earned him Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. The production itself later received nine Tony Award nominations. Radcliffe left the show on 1 January 2012. His first post-Harry Potter project was the 2012 horror film The Woman in Black, adapted from the 1983 novel by Susan Hill. The film was released on 3 February 2012 in the United States and Canada, and was released on 10 February in the UK. Radcliffe portrays a man sent to deal with the legal matters of a mysterious woman who has just died, and soon after he begins to experience strange events from the ghost of a woman dressed in black. He has said he was "incredibly excited" to be part of the film and described the script as "beautifully written".
In 2013, he portrayed American poet Allen Ginsberg in the thriller drama Kill Your Darlings (2013), directed by John Krokidas. He also starred in an Irish-Canadian romantic comedy film The F Word directed by Michael Dowseand written by Elan Mastai, based on TJ Dawe and Michael Rinaldi's play Toothpaste and Cigars and then he starred in an American dark fantasy horror film directed by Alexandre Aja Horns. Both of the films premiered at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival. Radcliffe also performed at the Noël Coward Theatre in the stage play revival of Martin McDonagh's dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan as the lead, Billy Claven, for which he won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Play. In 2015, Radcliffe starred as Igor in a science fiction horror film Victor Frankenstein (2015), directed by Paul McGuigan and written by Max Landis, which was based on contemporary adaptations of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. In 2016, he appeared as a wealthy villain in the mystery/action film Now You See Me 2 (2016), and as an oftentimes mobile corpse in the indie fantasy Swiss Army Man (2016).
Now being one of the world's most recognizable people, Daniel leads a somewhat normal life. He has made friends working on the Harry Potter films, which include his co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.- Actress
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Hannah Dominique E. John-Kamen is a British actress. She is known for her roles as Dutch in the Syfy television series Killjoys, Ornela in the HBO series Game of Thrones, F'Nale Zandor in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, and Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Hannah was born in Beverley, Yorkshire, England, the youngest of three children of a Nigerian forensic psychologist father and a Norwegian fashion model mother. She attended primary school in Kirk Ella and received her secondary education at Hull Collegiate School, and also trained at the National Youth Theatre in London. In 2012, she graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama.
John-Kamen began her professional career in 2011 when she provided her voice for the video game Dark Souls. She then went on to make episode appearances in television series Misfits (2011), Black Mirror (2011), Whitechapel (2012), The Syndicate (2012), The Midnight Beast (2012) and The Hour (2012).
In 2012, John-Kamen landed the lead role of Viva in Viva Forever, a West End musical based on the songs of the Spice Girls. Written by Jennifer Saunders and produced by Judy Craymer, Viva Forever premiered on 11 December 2012 at the Piccadilly Theatre to largely negative reviews. The Daily Mirror, however, praised John-Kamen's performance, noting, "It's a shame a talented cast, especially Hannah John-Kamen's Viva and the rest of Eternity, are let down by a clichéd plot and leaden dialogue." The show was eventually closed on 29 June 2013.
2015 saw John-Kamen land a starring role in SyFy's Killjoys. In 2016 John-Kamen had a guest starring role on HBO's Game of Thrones. In 2016, she appeared in "Playtest", an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror. She also appeared in Season two of the UK series The Tunnel, and played Ghost in the superhero film Ant-Man and the Wasp.
On John-Kamen's role in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, Kristen Tauer wrote: "While much of "Ready Player One" takes place in a virtual reality world, John-Kamen's character is unique in that she is rooted in the reality throughout the film."- Actor
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Nicholas Hoult was born on December 7, 1989 in Wokingham, Berkshire, England, UK as Nicholas Caradoc Hoult. His parents are Glenis Hoult, a piano teacher and Roger Hoult, a pilot. He has three siblings, two sisters and one brother. His great-aunt was one of the most popular actresses of her time, Dame Anna Neagle. He attended Sylvia Young Theatre School, a school for performing arts, to start acting as a career.
His breakthrough role was as a child when he starred as Marcus Brewer in About a Boy (2002), alongside Hugh Grant. In 2005, he starred in his first American film The Weather Man (2005) as Nicolas Cage's son. At age 17, he received recognition for starring as Tony Stonem in the BAFTAs-awarded British teen-drama series Skins (2007). Later he played the role of Kenny Potter in the Oscar-nominated film A Single Man (2009) after being discovered by director Tom Ford.
Hoult was cast as Hank / Beast in the X-Men franchise and starred in the films X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).
He also starred as "R" in the romance / horror zombie film Warm Bodies (2013), Jack in Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and British novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, in the biographical film Tolkien (2019).- Mandeep Dhillon is a British actress who has appeared in stage, television, film and radio productions, including the BBC Three comedy series Some Girls and Fried. She featured in the British romantic comedy Finding Fatimah in 2017, and as Constable Lizbyet Corwi in The City and the City in 2018. She also appears as Sandy in the Netflix Original dark-comedy After Life, having previously worked with Ricky Gervais in David Brent: Life on the Road. In 2021, she starred in the American crime television series CSI: Vegas.
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George MacKay was born in 1992 in Hammersmith, London, England, to Kim Baker, a British costume designer, and Paul Christopher MacKay, an Australian stage/lighting manager, from Adelaide. One of his grandmothers is from Cork, Ireland.
At the age of ten, George was scouted to audition for a role in the family feature, Peter Pan (2003). He quickly landed the part of Curly, one of the Lost Boys, and went on to have several minor roles on TV, including an episode of Rose and Maloney (2002) and Footprints in the Snow (2005). At thirteen, George landed the part of Riccio in the film adaptation of Cornelia Funke's best-selling children's novel, The Thief Lord (2006), starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and was also cast in lead role for the BBC adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb (2006).
George worked with Tim Roth, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sophie Okonedo for the HBO Movie Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006) and later took a part in the Dickensian drama, The Old Curiosity Shop (2007). Soon after, George co-starred with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber on Defiance (2008). In 2009, George took on the role of Harry, in The Boys Are Back (2009) alongside Clive Owen, for which he received 2 award nominations. His career took another step forward with Hunky Dory (2011).
Since, George has featured in several shorts which have been popular on the festival circuit and played the part of Tommo Peaceful with counterpart Jack O'Connell in the adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful (2012).
2013 was George's breakthrough year, and was recognized for his parts as Aaron in For Those in Peril (2013), Davy in the musical Sunshine on Leith (2013), Jake Whittam in Breakfast with Jonny Wilkinson (2013) and the dark horse Eddie in How I Live Now (2013). George received several nominations and for such features and later bought home a total of 5 awards.
George had a stint in the West End in 2014 in The Cement Garden. He portrayed Joe in the well-received Pride (2014) and Duane Hopkins' Bypass (2014) premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October. Both Captain Fantastic and Sadie Jones' The Outcast (2015) are in post-production and George will be returning to theatre for Eugene O'Neill's 'Ah,Wilderness!' this April.
In 2016, George starred in the film Captain Fantastic (2016), opposite Viggo Mortensen, and the mini-series 11.22.63 (2016), with James Franco and Sarah Gadon. He rounded out the decade playing the starring role in Sam Mendes' 1917 (2019), a box office hit and highly critically-acclaimed drama set during World War I and shot to simulate a single take in real time.- Actor
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John Boyega is a British actor, known for playing Finn in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Boyega rose to prominence in his native United Kingdom for his role of Moses in the 2011 sci-fi comedy film Attack the Block (2011), before attaining international recognition for his work as Finn in the seventh film of the Star Wars series.
Other credits include historical fiction drama film Half of a Yellow Sun (2013), four episodes of the television series 24: Live Another Day (2014), and the drama films Imperial Dreams (2014), The Circle (2017), and Detroit (2017).