Alisdair Simpson
Alisdair Simpson (born 31 December 1969) is a British actor and narrator. Alongside his acting credits in theatre and television he has narrated over 200 documentaries including Pompeii: The Last Day, Lost Land of the Jaguar, Expedition Borneo, Operation Iceberg, Doctors in the Death Zone, The Somme – From Defeat to Victory for the BBC. For the Yesterday channel he has narrated Nazi Hunters, Nazi Collaborators, Secret War, Great Crimes and Trials and Black Ops. He has also voiced many others for Discovery and Channel 4 amongst others.
He has a distinctive, masculine voice and a typical Received Pronunciation, making him one of the most popular and recognisable narrators of documentaries on television.
Biography and professional career
Alisdair went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and graduated in 1995.
His professional stage debut was at the Royal Exchange, Manchester in Tartuffe by Molière, and has gone on to work at Stratford and London in The White Devil, Troilus and Cressida and Three Hours after Marriage (1996/97) for the RSC. He was the King of France in Yukio Ninagawa's 1999/2000 production of King Lear in Tokyo, London and Stratford. He was Captain Horster in Trevor Nunn's 1997 production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People at the National Theatre and the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. He was Achilles in Troilus and Cressida for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol in 2003. He has also appeared at Watermill Theatre in the play Neville's Island, on tour in Stephen Daldry's An Inspector Calls and in The Years Between at the Royal in Northampton. In 2008 he appeared at the Young Vic in an opera based on David Lynch's Lost Highway.
On television he has appeared in No Bananas, Soldier Soldier, Men Behaving Badly, Teachers, Spooks, The Worst Week of My Life, Broken News, The Bill, Casualty, Paramount Comedy, Dream Team, etc.
Narrator
Alisdair voiced the Ford Focus "Shadows" campaign 2005 and the Ford Mondeo "Sea Creatures" campaign May 2004.
He has voiced audio guides for the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York and various corporate pieces.
Filmography
- No Bananas (1996)
- Soldier Soldier (1996)
- Men Behaving Badly (1997)
- Casualty (2001)
- Doctors (2001)
- Pompeii: The Last Day (Narration) (2003)
- The Bill (2003, 2005)
- Spooks (2004)
- Supervolcano: The Truth About Yellowstone (Narration) (2005)
- Genghis Khan (Narration) (2005)
- Broken News (2005)
- The Worst Week of My Life (2005)
- The Somme – From Defeat to Victory (Narration) (2006)
- Waking the Dead (2007)
- Expedition Borneo (Narration) (2007)
- The Science of Superstorms (Narration) (2007)
- Sea of Souls (2007)
- The Whistleblowers (2007)
- Lost Land of the Jaguar (Narration) (2008)
- Pacific Abyss (2008)
- Ancient Rome (Narration)
- Ancient MegaStructures (Narration)
- 1000 Ways to Die (Narration) (2008)
- Nazi Hunters (Narration) (2010)
- Great Crimes and Trials (Narration) (2011)
- Secret War (Narration) (2012)
- Black Ops (Narration) (2012, 2014)
- Myth Hunters (aka Raiders of the Lost Past) (Narration) (2013-2015)
- Ancient Black Ops (Narration) (2014)
- Game of Thrones (2014)
- Get Santa (2014)
- Operation Gold Rush with Dan Snow (2016) (Narration)
Other works
In 1996 Alisdair appeared in the John Webster play The White Devil produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.