Ian McNeice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ian McNeice (born October 2, 1950 in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, UK) is an internationally known English television and movie actor.
[edit] Career
His acting training started in the Taunton School in Somerset. This was followed up with two years at the Salisbury Playhouse. The next few years were spent in theatre, including a four-year career with The Royal Shakespeare Company, and a production of Nicholas Nickleby on Broadway.
His television breakthrough was as Harcourt in the award-winning series Edge of Darkness. He went on the appear in the 2000 television mini-series adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune as the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen – a role he later reprised for the 2003 sequel Children of Dune. Most recently, television viewers can see him in the memorable, if minor, role of the Forum crier ("Newsreader") in the joint HBO/BBC production Rome.
McNeice has also appeared in a number of films, including the 1994 science fiction movie No Escape, and the British film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995). His breakthrough into American films occurred when he played opposite Jim Carrey as Fulton Greenwall in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). He played Nazi Gerhard Klopfer in the BBC/HBO TV movie Conspiracy (film), dramatising the Wannsee Conference. Since then he has gone on to do other, more recent, films such as Around the World in 80 Days (2004), and the 2005 drama/supernatural thriller White Noise.
He has also applied his distinctive voice and accent to voice acting roles, such as the Vogon character Kwaltz – director of the Vogon Constructor Fleet – in the 2005 film adaptation of Douglas Adams' multi-format creation The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
