Simon Russell Beale

Sir Simon Russell Beale (born 12 January 1961) is an English actor.

He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation".

He has received two BAFTA Awards, three Olivier Awards, and a Tony Award.

Beale was born on 12 January 1961, one of six children of Captain, later Lieutenant General, Sir Peter Beale and his wife Julia née Winter.

He was born in Penang, Malaya, where his father was serving in the Army Medical Services.

Beale first came to the attention of theatre-goers in the late 1980s with a series of lauded comic performances, which were on occasion extremely camp, in such plays as The Man of Mode by George Etherege and Restoration by Edward Bond at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).

After Clifton, he went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and obtained a first in English, after which he was offered a place to undertake a PhD. He pursued further studies at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 1983.

He broadened his range in the early 1990s with moving performances as Konstantin in Chekhov's The Seagull, as Oswald in Ibsen's Ghosts, Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi and as Edgar in King Lear.

His father later, from 1991 to 1994, served as Surgeon-General of HM Armed Forces.

Several other members of Beale's family have pursued successful careers in medicine.

Beale was first drawn to performance when, at the age of eight, he became a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral and a pupil at the adjoining St Paul's Cathedral School.

His secondary education was undertaken at the independent Clifton College in Bristol.

His first stage performance was as Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream at primary school.

In the sixth form at Clifton he also performed in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play in which he would later star at the National Theatre.

At the first annual Ian Charleson Awards in January 1991, he received a special commendation for his 1990 performances of Konstantin in The Seagull, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida and Edward II in Edward II, all at the RSC.

It was at the RSC that he first worked with Sam Mendes, who directed him as Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, as Richard III and as Ariel in The Tempest, in the last of which he revealed a fine tenor voice.

Beale made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama Orlando (1992).

He gained prominence for his roles in Persuasion (1995), Hamlet (1996), My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Mary Queen of Scots (2018), Benediction (2021), and The Outfit (2022).

Since 1995, he has been a regular at the National Theatre, where his roles have included Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone opposite Michael Gambon, George in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and the lead in Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones, a part written specially for him.

He has received ten Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning three awards for his performances in Volpone (1996), Candide (2000), and Uncle Vanya (2003).

In 1997, he played the pivotal role of Kenneth Widmerpool in a television adaptation of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, for which he won the Best Actor award at the British Academy Television Awards in 1998.

The following year, he was a key part of Trevor Nunn's ensemble, playing in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (Voltaire/Pangloss), Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money and Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk at the National.

He earned two British Academy Television Awards one for Best Actor for A Dance to the Music of Time (1998), and the other for Best Supporting Actor for Henry IV, Part I and Part II (2012).

In 2000, he played Hamlet in a production directed by John Caird for the National Theatre, a role for which he was described by The Daily Telegraph as "portly [and] relatively long in the tooth".

Mendes also directed him as Iago in Othello at the Royal National Theatre and in Mendes's farewell productions at the Donmar Warehouse in 2002, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, in which Beale played the title role, and Twelfth Night, in which he played Malvolio.

Beale has also appeared in the television projects The Young Visiters (2003), Dunkirk (2004), and Vanity Fair (2018).

He won the 2003 Laurence Olivier Award for Uncle Vanya.

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.

In 2005, Beale was directed by Deborah Warner as Cassius in Julius Caesar alongside Ralph Fiennes as Antony.

That same year, he played the title role in Macbeth at the Almeida Theatre.

In autumn 2006, he played Galileo in David Hare's adaption of Brecht's Life of Galileo and as Face in The Alchemist.

In 2007, he reprised his 2005 Broadway role as King Arthur in the Monty Python musical Spamalot at the Palace Theatre, London.

From December 2007 to March 2008, he played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing directed by Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre and from February to July 2008, he played Andrew Undershaft in Hytner's production of Shaw's Major Barbara; he then appeared in Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache and Landscape.

In 2008, he made his debut as a television presenter, fronting the BBC series Sacred Music with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen.

From 2014 to 2016, he was part of the main cast of Showtime's Penny Dreadful.

Various specials and a second series have since been produced; the most recent episode (Monteverdi in Mantua: The Genius of the Vespers) was broadcast in 2015.

In 2017, he portrayed Lavrentiy Beria in Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin, for which he received the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.

For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

Beale started his acting career at the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre.