Anthony Andrews

Anthony Corin Gerald Andrews^[1] ( /ˈæntəni ˈændruːz/; born 12 January 1948) is an English actor.

Life and career

Andrews was born in London, the son of Geraldine Agnes (née Cooper), a dancer, and Stanley Thomas Andrews, a musical arranger and musical conductor.^[1] He grew up in the North Finchley district of London. At the age of eight he undertook dancing lessons, making his stage debut as the White Rabbit in a stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.^[2]

After a series of short term "fill-in" jobs that included catering, farming and journalism, he secured a position at the Chichester Theatre where he worked as an assistant stage manager and later as a stand-in producer. He auditioned in 1968 for a production of Alan Bennett's new play, Forty Years On, which featured John Gielgud as the headmaster of a British public school during the First World War period. Andrews was cast as Skinner, one of twenty school boys; the role gave him the opportunity at an early age of working with Gielgud.

His subsequent work includes a leading role in Brideshead Revisited as Lord Sebastian Flyte.^[3] In 1982, he won a Golden Globe and BAFTA TV Award for his performance, and was nominated for an Emmy Award. In the United States, Andrews is known for his portrayal of Ivanhoe as well as that of Sir Percy Blakeney in the 1982 film, The Scarlet Pimpernel.^[3] He was the main star of the ITV television series Danger UXB, in which Andrews plays a British bomb disposal officer in World War II during the London Blitz.^[3] The series first aired in the United States in 1979 on Masterpiece Theatre.

He played Professor Higgins in a stage version of My Fair Lady (2001) and Count Fosco in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White.[1]

He was the narrator for a 21st Anniversary BBC Radio 2 special broadcast of Cameron Mackintosh's musical Les Misérables, sung by the (at the time) current West End cast at the Mermaid Theatre in London on Sunday 8 October 2006. Most recently Andrews appeared as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in the 2010 film The King's Speech.

Selected filmography

• Percy's Progress (1974)
• Take Me High (1974)
• Operation: Daybreak (1975)
• Ivanhoe - as Ivanhoe (1982)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel - as Sir Percy Blakeney (1982)
• Under the Volcano (1984)
• The Holcroft Covenant - as Johann von Tiebolt / Jonathan Tennyson (1985)
• The Lighthorsemen - as Maj. Richard Meinertzhagen (1987)
• The Second Victory - as Maj. Hanlon (1987)
• Hanna's War - as McCormack (1988)
• Haunted - as Robert Mariell (1995)
• The King's Speech - as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (2010)

Producer

• Lost in Siberia (1991)
• Haunted (1995)

Theatrical roles

• Count Fosco in The Woman in White
• Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady
• Pastor Manders in Ghosts
• Seasons with The New Shakespeare Company and Chichester Festival Theatre
• Somerset Maugham's The Letter at the Wyndham's Theatre, London (2007)
• Oscar in premiere of Bully Boy at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton (2011)

References

External links

• Anthony Andrews at the Internet Movie Database