Walter van Dyk (born 20 May 1961) is a British actor, singer and narrator.
Van Dyk is the son of Dutch composer Rudi Martinus van Dijk and the Montessori educator Jeanne Elisabeth Anna Koning. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, van Dyk was educated at Hull High School in Hull, Massachusetts in the United States, and later studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof (HB) Studios in New York and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. He later studied singing at Trinity College of Music in London.
Walter van Dyk will open on September 22nd, 2011 at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames in The Importance of Being Earnest directed by Stephen Unwin. He appeared earlier this year at the Old Vic Theatre in London as Herr Schwarz in Georges Feydeau's A Flea in her Ear directed by Richard Eyre Van Dyk made his first professional American stage debut in March 1980 at the American Repertory Theatre in the ART's inaugural production of A Midsummer Night's Dream playing Snug, the joiner. Since then Van Dyk has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. London West End theatre includes the London Evening Standard Award nominated Enter the Guardsman directed by Jeremy Sams at the Donmar Warehouse, the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Michael Pennington, the Duke in Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, and George Ketteridge in the Olivier Award nominated production of Cole Porter's High Society. Van Dyk appeared in the USA in 2005 in the Yellow Barn Music Festival production in Amherst, Massachusetts of Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King. In the Netherlands, he appeared with his own ensemble, Van Dyk & Company, in a production of songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.[1]
Van Dyk's work for television includes the lead role of Pieter in the BBC Screenplay Can't Stop me Dreaming directed by Bernard Rudden (1992), and roles in The Detectives, Birds of a Feather, Framed, The Basil Brush Show, London's Burning and Love Hurts. Van Dyk most recently appeared in Kevin MacDonald's latest film Eagle of the Ninth (2011) released in the UK March 18th, 2011. He played the role of Thoolen in the movie Incognito.[2]
Van Dyk has made a specialty as narrator of classical chamber music most recently in the 2007 production of Igor Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at Wilton's Music Hall in London. He has performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, the Cheltenham International Music Festival, and in the United States for Collage New Music in Boston as well as with the Peabody Trio in Chicago, San Francisco, and Boulder, Colorado. Other festivals include Music for Salem in NY, the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Vermont, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland, Maine.[3]