Simon Russell Beale

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Simon Russell Beale

Born January 12, 1961
Penang, Malaya
Occupation Actor

Simon Russell Beale CBE (born January 12, 1961) is an award-winning British actor.

In the Independent on Sunday 2006 Pink List - a list of the most influential gay men and women in the UK - he was placed at number 30, an increase of four places from the year before.

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[edit] Background

Beale was born in Penang, Malaya, where his father was serving as a doctor in the military. Several members of his family had careers in medicine. He was first drawn to performance when, at the age of eight, he became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral.

At the age of fourteen he gave his first theatre performance playing Desdemona in Othello at Clifton College's Redgrave theatre; in the sixth form he also performed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a play in which he would later star at the National Theatre. After Clifton, he went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and obtained a first in English, after which he was offered a place to do a PhD. He graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1983.

He is President of the Anthony Powell Society, a tribute to his portrayal of Kenneth Widmerpool.

[edit] Career

[edit] Stage roles

Russell Beale first came to the attention of theatre-goers in the late 1980s with a series of lauded comic performances, on occasion extremely camp, in such plays as The Man of Mode by George Etherege and Restoration by Edward Bond at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He broadened his range in the early 1990s with moving performances as Konstantin in Chekhov's The Seagull, as Oswald in Ibsen's Ghosts, Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi and as Edgar in King Lear. It was at the RSC that he first worked with Sam Mendes who directed him there as Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, as Richard III and as a striking Ariel in The Tempest, in the last of which he revealed a fine tenor voice.

Sam Mendes also directed him as Iago in Othello at the Royal National Theatre and in Mendes' farewell productions at the Donmar Warehouse, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, in which he played the title role and Twelfth Night, in which Beale played Malvolio. In the spring of 2009 the same team will be collaborating on The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard, in which Russell Beale will play Leontes and Lopakhin respectively, at the Old Vic Theatre.

Since 1995 he has been a regular at the Royal National Theatre where his roles have included Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone opposite Michael Gambon, George in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and the lead in Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones written especially for him. In 1999 he was a key part of Trevor Nunn's ensemble, playing in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Edward Bulwer Lytton's Money and Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk. In autumn 2006 he played Galileo in David Hare's adaption of Brecht's Life of Galileo and Face in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist. At the end of 2007 to the end of March 2008 he played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing directed by Nicholas Hytner.

His performance at the National as Hamlet attracted attention and provoked commentary; some considered Beale an unlikely choice to embody the quintessentially youthful and contemplative hero once played by virile actors like Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Mel Gibson. Beale's performance, more restrained and conversational in nature, was a resounding success, becoming one of the most noteworthy Hamlets of recent decades.

In 2005, Beale was directed by Deborah Warner as Cassius in Julius Caesar alongside Ralph Fiennes as Antony. That same year, he played the title role in Macbeth at the Almeida Theatre. In 2007 he reprised his Broadway role as King Arthur in the Monty Python musical Spamalot at the Palace Theatre, London.

He is currently playing the role of Andrew Undershaft at the National Theatre's production of George Bernard's Shaw's Major Barbara and will be next seen in Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache also at the National.

[edit] Screen roles

In 1997 he portrayed the pivotal role of Kenneth Widmerpool in a television adaptation of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, for which he won the Best Actor award at the British Academy Television Awards in 1998. He also played the King of Hearts in a 1999 television adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In both of these he played the spouse of two characters played by Miranda Richardson, Pamela Flitton in the former and the Queen of Hearts in the latter.

In 2008 he made his debut as a television presenter, fronting the BBC Four series Sacred Music about Western church music.

[edit] Awards and accomplishments

He has won the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award three times (for his performances in Volpone, Candide and Uncle Vanya). In 2003 he was appointed CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

[edit] External links


Preceded by
Tim Curry
March 17, 2005 (Opening) -
December 20, 2005		 Actor playing King Arthur on Spamalot
December 21, 2005 -
April 26, 2006		 Succeeded by
Harry Groener
April 27, 2006 -
October 31, 2006