Ian McNeice
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| Ian McNeice | |
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| Born | October 2, 1950  Basingstoke, Hampshire, England |
Ian McNeice (born October 2, 1950) is an internationally known English actor.
McNeice was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire. McNeice's 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 to appear in the 2000 television miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune as the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen – a role he later reprised for the 2003 sequel Children of Dune. Most recently, his television appearances have included all three series of Doc Martin (in which he plays Bert), the third episode of the second series of Lewis and as the recurring minor character of Forum crier ("Newsreader") in the joint HBO/BBC production Rome.
McNeice has also appeared in a number of films, including 84 Charing Cross Road, No Escape, and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. 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 2001 BBC/HBO TV movie Conspiracy, dramatising the Wannsee Conference. Since then he has been in Around the World in 80 Days (2004), and the 2005 drama/supernatural thriller White Noise He also appeared as Potipher in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.
He has also applied his distinctive voice and accent to voice-acting roles: 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; and in 2007 when he made his Doctor Who debut guest-starring as villain Zeus in the Big Finish BBC Digital Radio 7 / CD-released drama Immortal Beloved, starring Paul McGann (as the Eighth Doctor).
