Simon Russell Beale
Birthday: Born in 1961-01-12 in Penang, Malaysia
Deathday: Alive
Sir Simon Russell Beale CBE (born January 12, 1961) is an English actor. He is known for his appearances in film, television and theatre, and work on radio, on audiobooks and as a narrator. For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2019. He has spent much of his theatre career working in productions for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He has received ten Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning three awards for his performances in Volpone (1996), Candide (2000), and Uncle Vanya (2003). For his work on the Broadway stage he has received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination for his performance as George in the Tom Stoppard play Jumpers in 2004. For his role as Henry Lehman in The Lehman Trilogy, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and was nominated for an Olivier Award. Beale has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation". Beale made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama Orlando (1992). He continued acting in films such as Persuasion (1995), Hamlet (1996), My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Into the Woods (2014), and Mary Queen of Scots (2018). In 2017, he starred in Armando Iannucci's dark comedy The Death of Stalin playing Lavrentiy Beria for which he received the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has also appeared in the television projects The Young Visiters (2003), Dunkirk (2004), and as Falstaff in the BBC made-for-television films Henry IV, Part I and Part II (2012). He was part of the main cast of Showtime's Penny Dreadful.
TV Credits
Dunkirk
Character: Winston Churchill
Major factual drama telling the story of history's greatest maritime evacuation, after the World War II Battle of Dunkirk in May and June 1940....
A Dance to the Music of Time
Character: Widmerpool
A Dance to the Music of Time is a four-part adaptation of Anthony Powell's 12-volume novel sequence that aired on Channel 4 in 1997. The series is a sharp, comic portrait of upper-class and bohemian England, spanning almost a century, from the early 1920s to modern times....
Penny Dreadful
Character: Ferdinand Lyle
Some of literature's most terrifying characters, including Dr. Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and iconic figures from the novel Dracula are lurking in the darkest corners of Victorian London. Penny Dreadful is a frightening psychological thriller that weaves together these classic horror origin stories into a new adult drama....
A Very Peculiar Practice
Character: Mark Stibbs
A young and idealistic Doctor Stephen Daker arrives at Lowlands University to work at the Health Centre, but has to cope with an eccentric set of colleagues....
American Experience
Character: John Adams (voice)
TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today....
Simon Schama's Shakespeare
Character:
Simon Schama explores the life and times of William Shakespeare to shed a new and fascinating light on some of the greatest plays ever written. He asks the question: "What came first, Englishness, or Shakespeare's idea of it?" and produces a persuasive argument in favour of the latter....
Vanity Fair
Character: John Sedley
In a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having, no one is more determined to climb to the heights of English society than Becky Sharp....
The Hollow Crown
Character: Falstaff
A series of British television films featuring William Shakespeare's History Plays....
Symphony
Character:
Simon Russell Beale presents a radical reappraisal of the place of the symphony in the modern world and explores the surprising way in which it has shaped our history and identity....
Spooks
Character: William Towers
Tense drama series about the different challenges faced by the British Security Service as they work against the clock to safeguard the nation. The title is a popular colloquialism for spies, and the series follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service's Thames House headquarters, in a highly secure suite of offices known as The Grid....
Mary & George
Character: Sir George Villiers
In 17th century England, Mary Villiers molds her beautiful son, George, to seduce King James I, intending to gain riches and influence through outrageous schemes....
Spooks
Character: Home Secretary
Tense drama series about the different challenges faced by the British Security Service as they work against the clock to safeguard the nation. The title is a popular colloquialism for spies, and the series follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service's Thames House headquarters, in a highly secure suite of offices known as The Grid....
Blackadder
Character: Napoléon
Black Adder traces the deeply cynical and self-serving lineage of various Edmund Blackadders throughout British history, from the muck of the Middle Ages to the frontline of the First World War....
House of the Dragon
Character: Ser Simon Strong
The Targaryen dynasty is at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins when King Viserys breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm....
Douglas Is Cancelled
Character: Bently
The career of respected news presenter Douglas is threatened after he makes an ill-advised joke. With her 2 million social media followers, tech-savvy co-anchor Madeline could throw Douglas a lifeline by posting in his defense… but will she?...
Movie Credits
Lava Land - Glowing Hawaii
Character: Narrator
Hawaii, with its tropical rainforests and diverse coral reef is a spectacular natural paradise for travellers, surfers and all fans of breathtaking sandy beaches and lush green mountains. But life on the American island chain also has a dangerous side: permanently active volcanoes, lava caves, and even burning lava pours into the sea! Here you can see black smoke rise up, spray the red-hot magma into the sky and feel how the earth trembles. Located on the Pacific plate is unusual for volcanoes, ...
Orlando
Character: Earl of Moray
England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request....
The Hour
Character: Himself
The hour before actors go on stage at the National Theatre in London is a performance in and of itself....
Persuasion
Character: Charles Musgrove
Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, is persuaded to break her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young sea captain of meager means. Years later, money troubles force Anne's father to rent out the family estate to Admiral Croft, and Anne is again thrown into company with Frederick -- who is now rich, successful, and perhaps still in love with Anne....
The Deep Blue Sea
Character: Sir William Collyer
The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot....
The Young Visiters
Character: Prince of Wales
The Young Visiters, written in twelve days by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890, is a surreal blend of naiveté, precocious perception and inadvertent social satire....
My Week with Marilyn
Character: Cotes-Preedy
London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of his upcoming movie, premiered in 1957 as The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe. Young Colin Clark, who dreams on having a career in movie business, manages to get a job on the set as third assistant director....
Firebrand
Character: Stephen Gardiner
Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, is named regent while the tyrant battles abroad. When the king returns, increasingly ill and paranoid, Katherine finds herself fighting for her own survival....
Into the Woods
Character: Baker's Father
In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch....
Legacy
Character: Hookey
A KGB plot to attack the UK has plunged Britain into a state of emergency. Charles, a young MI6 spy, is asked to revive an old friendship with Russian diplomat Viktor. But Viktor has his own agenda....
Hamlet
Character: Second Gravedigger
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing....
National Theatre Live: King Lear
Character: Lear, King of Britain
An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of them is most eloquent in praising him. His favourite, Cordelia, says nothing. Simon Russell Beale, whose recent appearances at the National include Timon of Athens and Collaborators, takes the title role in Shakespeare’s tragedy....
Thor: Love and Thunder
Character: Dionysus
After his retirement is interrupted by Gorr the God Butcher, a galactic killer who seeks the extinction of the gods, Thor Odinson enlists the help of King Valkyrie, Korg, and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who now wields Mjolnir as the Mighty Thor. Together they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late....
The Legend of Tarzan
Character: Mr. Frum
Tarzan, having acclimated to life in London, is called back to his former home in the jungle to investigate the activities at a mining encampment....
The Gathering
Character: Luke Fraser
Itinerant traveler Cassie Grant comes out of a car accident in Glastonbury, England, with partial memory loss. The deeply regretful driver allows her to convalesce at a large rural home, where she becomes friends with the woman's stepson, Michael. As Cassie delves into Michael's research about an old, newly discovered area church, it triggers some strange premonitions and offers gradual clues about her deeper links to this British community....
BBC Proms: Sondheim's 80th Birthday
Character: Himself - Performer
Marking the 80th birthday of one of Broadway's great innovators, the first ever all-Sondheim Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert includes excerpts from hit shows A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods performed by a starry cast of leading figures of the opera and theatre worlds with Bryn Terfel, Maria Friedman, Simon Russell Beale and some special guests. Also on stage is the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abel. Introduced by Katie Derham....
Home! Home!
Character: Self (narrator)
A lyric documentary about home, time, memory and mortality, written by Terence Davies and realised posthumously by the PASSING TIME team, produced for the Centre Pompidou's complete retrospective....
Monteverdi in Mantua - The Genius of the Vespers
Character: presenter
Monteverdi in Mantua tells the story of the Duke of Mantua and his court composer Claudio Monteverdi during the turbulent times of the late Italian renaissance. From their volatile relationship would come one of the most revolutionary collections of music ever published: The Vespers of 1610. The programme is presented by Simon Russell Beale who visits Mantua and, together with conductor Harry Christophers and his choir “The Sixteen”, explores this major turning point in Western Music....
An Easter Celebration
Character: presenter
Simon Russell Beale presents a special concert for Easter from LSO St Luke's in London, performed by the award-winning choir The Sixteen, conducted by founder Harry Christophers. The music takes us on a journey of over six hundred years, from haunting plainchant through to the celebrated music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Highlights include Palestrina's motet Assumpta Est Maria, and Allegri's Miserere....
Deep Water
Character: Donald Crowhurst (voice)
DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ever – the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race....
Blackadder: Back & Forth
Character: Wellington
What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly incompetent friends, turns out to be the real thing and hurls him and his imbecile underling, Baldrick, through the course of human history....
Downton Abbey 3
Character:
Plot details under wraps....
Cunk on Shakespeare
Character: Self - Actor
Fresh from her triumphs on Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe investigating time, Winston Churchill, and Donald Trump, Philomena Cunk has finally been given her own show - about William Shakespeare. Cunk will leave no stone unturned as she gets to the bottom of the Bard, visiting his birthplace, exploring the Globe, studying priceless artefacts and interviewing literally six different experts....
The Death of Stalin
Character: Lavrenti Beria
When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. As they bumble, brawl and back-stab their way to the top, the question remains — just who is running the government?...
Alice in Wonderland
Character: King Cedric of Hearts
Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?...
Shakespeare Live! From the RSC
Character: Richard II
From the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and guests mark the life of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death....
Muse of Fire
Character: Self
Funny, passionate, exciting, and smart: ‘Muse Of Fire’ will change the way you feel about Shakespeare forever. This unique feature documentary follows two actors, Giles Terera and Dan Poole, as they travel the world to find out everything they can about tackling the greatest writer of them all. Together they have directed and produced an inspiring film that aims to demystify and illuminate Shakespeare’s work for everyone: from actors, directors and students of all disciplines, right through to ...
National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage
Character: Hamlet
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable performances, broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world....
RSC Live: The Tempest
Character: Prospero
On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and this no ordinary island. Prospero is a magician, able to control the very elements and bend nature to his will. When a sail appears on the horizon, he reaches out across the ocean to the ship that carries the men who wronged him. Creating a vast magical storm he wrecks the ship and washes his enemies up on the shore. When they wake they find themselv...
National Theatre Live: London Assurance
Character: Sir Harcourt Courtly
Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charles also falls in love with Grace. When his father appears on the scene, he has to convince him that there is a case of mistaken identity and he is somebody else. Then Lady Gay Spanker, a married woman also visiting at the house, is persuaded by Charles to seduce his father and thus divert his attention from Grace. Much confusion and scheming ensues...
National Theatre Live: Collaborators
Character: Joseph Stalin
John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov....
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House)
Character: The Duchess / Introduced by
A full-length ballet created by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The ballet is based on Lewis Carroll's famous story of Alice, an ordinary girl who one summer afternoon falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself on an extraordinary adventure. The music is by Joby Talbot, with designs by the internationally acclaimed Bob Crowley. Alice is danced by the Royal Ballet's Lauren Cuthbertson, and actor Simon Russell-Beale plays the cameo ...
National Theatre Live: Timon of Athens
Character: Timon
Based on Shakespeare’s play, Timon of Athens tells the tale of conspicuous consumption, debt and ruin. Timon of Athens is a wealthy friend to the rich and powerful. With his riches, he showers hospitality on the city’s elite. Unfortunately, his associates don’t lend him a helping hand when he accidentally spends more than he has on resources. After a final banquet, Timon is forced to withdraw himself to a wasteland, living off nothing but roots and cursing bankrupt Athens....
Museo
Character: Frank Graves
Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away with a loot of more than hundred invaluable pieces of Mayan art, unaware of the consequences of their outrageous act....
My Cousin Rachel
Character: Couch
A young Englishman plots revenge against his mysterious, beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms....
An Ideal Husband
Character: Sir Edward
Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously....
Radioactive
Character: Professor Lippmann
The story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century....
Operation Finale
Character: David Ben-Gurion
In 1960, a team of Israeli secret agents is deployed to find Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi architect of the Holocaust, supposedly hidden in Argentina, and get him to Israel to be judged....
Mary Queen of Scots
Character: Robert Beale
In 1561, Mary Stuart, widow of the King of France, returns to Scotland, reclaims her rightful throne and menaces the future of Queen Elizabeth I as ruler of England, because she has a legitimate claim to the English throne. Betrayals, rebellions, conspiracies and their own life choices imperil both Queens. They experience the bitter cost of power, until their tragic fate is finally fulfilled....
A Christmas Carol
Character: Scrooge's voice (voice)
The radical new take on Dickens’ classic seeks both to exhume the original story’s gritty commentary on social inequality and the corrupting influence of greed, and to breathe new life into the lyricism of the original text by setting its scenes to extraordinary tableaux of modern dance....
National Theatre Live: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
Character: Richard II
Simon Russell Beale plays William Shakespeare’s Richard II, broadcast live from the stage of the Almeida Theatre in London to cinemas....
A Christmas History
Character: Presenter
Simon Russell Beale takes a journey through Italy, Britain, Germany and Austria as he explores how the sound of Christmas has evolved in response to changing ideas about the Nativity. His story takes us through two millennia of music, from a fragment of papyrus preserving the earliest known piece of Christian music to the stories behind Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Silent Night and In the Bleak Midwinter, and the work of popular Christmas composer, John Rutter. Music is performed by Harry Christ...
National Theatre Live: The Lehman Trilogy
Character: Henry Lehman
On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside. Dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, and triggers the largest financial crisis in history....
Operation Mincemeat
Character: Winston Churchill
In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily....
Benediction
Character: Robbie Ross
Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery, but became a vocal critic of the government's continuation of the war when he returned from service. Adored by members of the aristocracy as well as stars of London's literary and stage world, he embarked on affairs with several men as he attempted to come to terms with his homosexuality....
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Character:
Released alongside a spectacular edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the Apple iPad, this beautifully produced DVD features specially filmed performances of all 154 Sonnets by a stellar cast of actors including, Fiona Shaw, Sir Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. William Shakespeare’s Sonnets are among the most beautiful and most fascinating poems ever written. All of the poems, together with their enigmatic Dedication, are featured in readings by a star-studded cast. A full-colour accompanying...
The Outfit
Character: Roy Boyle
Leonard is an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. After a personal tragedy, he’s ended up in Chicago, operating a small tailor shop in a rough part of town where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters....