| Simon Treves | |
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Alex Brenner 2010 |
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| Born | Frederick Simon Treves 19 June 1957 Watford, Hertfordshire, England |
| Spouse | Mirela (née Kalicanin) |
Frederick Simon Treves, known as Simon Treves, is an English actor, director and writer probably best known for playing Harold 'Stinker' Pinker in three series of ITV's Jeeves and Wooster.
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Born 19 June 1957 in Watford in England, Treves is the eldest son of actor Frederick Treves and the great great nephew of Sir Frederick Treves, the surgeon who treated Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.
Educated at the King's College School in Wimbledon and Birkbeck, University of London, he trained as an actor at the National Youth Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.[1]
As an actor, he has played at many of the leading regional UK theatres, including the Manchester Royal Exchange, Birmingham Rep, Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, Leicester Haymarket and Salisbury Playhouse. He made his debut with the RSC at Stratford in 1983,[1] and returned in 1986 to play Joey Percival in Shaw's Misalliance at the Barbican, in a cast that included Brian Cox, Jane Lapotaire, Elizabeth Spriggs and Mick Ford. His association with Brian Cox continued in 1995 when Cox cast him as Buckingham in his production of Richard III at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park.[1]
Anthony Hopkins cast him as Willy Nilly in his production of Under Milk Wood for the official opening of the AIR Studios at Lyndhurst Hall, Hampstead in 1992, in aid of The Prince's Trust. Hopkins then asked Simon to personally assist him on his film and theatre productions of August, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, relocated to North Wales. At the Orange Tree, Richmond he starred as schizophrenic Victorian artist Louis Wain in Jane Coles' Cat with Green Violin. He played De Brie in the original 1992 UK production of David Hirson's multi award-winning La Bête and Bassanes in John Ford's The Broken Heart, both at the Lyric Hammersmith.
In 1999 Treves travelled to S.E. Asia to lead the Singapore Repertory Theatre company production of M. Butterfly as Gallimard,[2] (a part originated in London ten years earlier by Anthony Hopkins).
In 2008 he played Richard Greatham in Hay Fever at Manchester Royal Exchange.[3]
On TV, Treves is probably best remembered as Harold 'Stinker' Pinker in three series of Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.[4][5] His other TV appearances include Lynda La Plante's Above Suspicion: Silent Scream , Bodily Harm and Charles II: The Power and The Passion (both directed by Joe Wright), Soldier Soldier, The Lab, Boon and By the Sword Divided (as Charles II).[6] As a child he appeared with his younger brother Patrick on the Christmas 1967 edition of children's TV favourite, Crackerjack.
He has acted in over one hundred radio productions for the BBC since his debut as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim in 1985,[7] and was a member of the Radio Drama Company from 1989 to 1991 and again in 2007/8. Much of his work has been with award-winning radio producer Dirk Maggs, including Independence Day UK, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Adventures of Superman, The Gemini Apes and most recently Boscobel and The Adventures of Sexton Blake.
In the early eighties he regularly voiced trails for one of the first UK breakfast TV channels, TV-am. Other voice-over work was for Channel 4's Right to Reply, BBC One and numerous radio, film and commercial companies. His is one of the voices on the computer game, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon.[8]
His play Bitter with a Twist was produced by the Bristol Old Vic in 1999 and is published by Faber & Faber.[9] It received its European premiere in Amsterdam in May 2011. Other commissions include two linked internet audio dramas - Ash and Gold, for totallyword.com; and an original short screenplay, Tweeny, commissioned by Brian Cox and Skreba Films, which was shortlisted by Channel 4 but ultimately failed to win funding. He recently adapted Jim Broadbent's A Sense of History for the stage; wrote and directed Smile for Miniaturists 24 at the Arcola; and devised and scripted Neither Here nor There (a celebration of cult Scottish comic Chic Murray), broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in August 2007.[1]
Treves was awarded an M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck, University of London in 2005,[1] and directed the stage premiere of the original one-act television version of Terry Johnson & Kate Lock's Tuesday's Child at Hampstead Theatre in 2005.
Treves married Mirela (née Kalicanin) in 2001 and lives in Buckinghamshire. They have two sons, Thomas and Benjamin. He is a skilled cartoonist and his original desire was to go into animation.
He briefly coached Claudia Schiffer in 2001/02.