David Meyer

David Meyer is an English actor born on 24 July 1947 in Watford, England. He is the identical twin of Anthony Meyer, and the two brothers have frequently appeared together throughout their careers in film and on stage. Meyer is perhaps most widely recognized for his role as Mischka, a knife-throwing circus performer and assassin, in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, in which he was credited as "Twin One" and his brother portrayed the parallel character Grischka. He has also built a substantial stage career through Shakespearean roles including Hamlet, Ferdinand, and Lysander, as well as a portrayal of Isaac Newton, and has been a member of Shakespeare's Globe in London.

Meyer's early professional work included a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played a Fairy in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream between August 1972 and August 1973, with his twin brother sharing the role during part of that run. The production toured and included performances at the Aldwych Theatre in London. In October 1974, Meyer made his Broadway debut starring in Lindsay Kemp's play Flowers at the Biltmore Theatre in New York City. The following year, in August 1975, he played Wilf in Kevin Billington's production of Bloody Neighbours at the ICA Theatre in London.

His screen career developed significantly in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1976, Meyer and his twin appeared in director Celestrino Coronado's experimental film adaptation of Hamlet, with David portraying Hamlet and Anthony playing Laertes. Shakespeare scholar Stephen M. Buhler described the film as a "wildly experimental film essay" that stressed internal divisions within the title character by casting the two brothers. In 1978, the twins played the adult twin characters Andrew and Étienne, sons of William Shatner's character, in the Canadian film The Third Walker, set in Cape Breton Island and centered on two families whose infant sons are mistakenly switched at birth. The film received three nominations at the 29th Canadian Film Awards. That same period also saw Meyer take on the role of Henry Ingram in the BBC television miniseries An Englishman's Castle, alongside Kenneth More and Nigel Havers. In 1979, he played Ferdinand opposite Peter Bull as Alonso in Derek Jarman's film adaptation of The Tempest.

In 1982, Meyer and his brother appeared together again as the Poulencs in Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Following Octopussy in 1983, Meyer appeared in 1985 as Lysander in another Coronado television film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He later portrayed both Moth and Demetrius in the same play in stage productions directed by Peter Brook. During the mid-1980s, Meyer and his brother declined an offer to play Siamese twins at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. In 1989, he reunited with Jarman for War Requiem, playing a minor role as a businessman in a cast that included Laurence Olivier, Tilda Swinton, and Sean Bean. Around the same period, Meyer portrayed the doctor Frederick Treves opposite David Moylan as Joseph Merrick in Phillip Grout's production of The Elephant Man at the Boulevard Theatre, a performance that reviewer Gerald van Werson of The Stage described as stealing the show, played with "fastidious zeal and self-doubt."

Meyer's later career continued across television, film, and stage. In 1992, he appeared as a doctor in the television series Inspector Morse. In 1996, he played Alonso on stage in The Tempest. In 1997, he portrayed a Gestapo man in Sean Mathias's film Bent, opposite Clive Owen and Ian McKellen, a British-Japanese drama based on Martin Sherman's 1979 play about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. In 2008, he played the nervous stage manager in Richard Jones's production of Pagliacci at the London Coliseum. In 2011, he portrayed Isaac Newton in a production that toured the United States and included a performance at the Royal Society; writer Philip Ball, reviewing the play for Nature, noted that Meyer was one of three actors, including a woman, to portray Newton at different points in his life. In 2015, Meyer appeared as the father of Ben Whishaw's character Danny in the television series London Spy. In 2017, as part of Shakespeare's Globe, he played Saturn in James Wallace's production of The Woman in the Moon at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Meyer also received the Los Angeles Drama-Logue Award for his performance as Ed in Entertaining Mr Sloane.