Jamie Parker

Jamie Parker is an English actor and singer born on 14 August 1979 in Middlesbrough, Cleveland, and raised in Darlington. He attended Loretto School before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 2002. His great-grandfather was the English footballer Alf Common. Parker married actress Deborah Crowe in 2007; the couple have a son named William.

Parker's professional stage career began with Alan Bennett's The History Boys at the National Theatre, a production he joined from its first reading, initially reading the part of Rudge before taking on the role of Scripps. He performed the role across the original London production and subsequent productions in Broadway, Sydney, Wellington, and Hong Kong, as well as in radio and film versions of the play. The role drew on his musical abilities, requiring him to play piano and sing in several scenes. His National Theatre work also included a 2008 revival of The Revenger's Tragedy.

Beyond The History Boys, Parker accumulated a wide range of stage credits in the United Kingdom. In 2011, he appeared at Chichester in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead alongside fellow History Boys cast member Samuel Barnett, a production that subsequently transferred to the West End. The following autumn he played Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 2013 he appeared in the Menier Chocolate Factory production of Proof and in Candida at the Theatre Royal, Bath. He played Mike Connor in High Society at the Old Vic in London, and in 2015 he sang several numbers in the Late Night Sinatra concert performed by the John Wilson Orchestra during the BBC Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall.

Parker developed a sustained relationship with Shakespeare's Globe, tracing the arc of Shakespeare's Prince Hal across multiple productions. In 2009 he played Oliver in As You Like It at the Globe, and in 2010 he returned to play Prince Hal in both Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2, briefly playing a wooden recorder in an early tavern scene. In the spring of 2012 he toured the United Kingdom in the Globe's production of Henry V, which subsequently played at Shakespeare's Globe on London's Southbank. He was also featured in two of the six episodes of the BBC Four series Shakespeare Uncovered in 2012. For BBC Radio 4, he played Hamlet in a production directed by Marc Beeby, first broadcast in March 2014, and later played Mark Antony in a Radio 4 production of Julius Caesar, also directed by Beeby, first broadcast in July 2018.

Parker originated the role of Harry Potter in the West End premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre, London. On 9 April 2017, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play for the performance, as well as a WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Play. He reprised the role on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre in 2018, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. His Broadway career spans 2006 to 2018, encompassing both The History Boys and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

In film, Parker played Donald Scripps in the 2006 screen adaptation of The History Boys, directed from Alan Bennett's own screenplay. In 2008 he appeared as Lieutenant Werner von Haeften in the historical thriller Valkyrie, and he can also be seen in the BBC and HBO co-production Parade's End. In 2015 he had a cameo as an estate agent in the film adaptation of Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van, appearing alongside several of his former History Boys co-stars.

Parker's more recent stage work includes the title role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the Southwark Playhouse in London, which ran from 22 May to 1 July 2023. Later that year he played Dan Goodman in the Donmar Warehouse production of the musical Next to Normal, a role he reprised for the show's West End transfer in 2024.