Jonny Lee Miller

Jonny Lee Miller, born Jonathan Lee Miller on 15 November 1972 in Kingston-upon-Thames, Greater London, is an English actor whose career spans film, television, and stage, including Broadway appearances between 2009 and 2019. Raised in south-west London, Miller comes from a theatrical family: both his parents, Ann and Alan Miller, worked as theatre actors, and his maternal grandfather was Bernard Lee, who portrayed M in the first eleven James Bond films. As a child, Miller attended Tiffin School, where he took part in productions including The Ragged Child and performed with the Tiffin Swing Band. He joined the National Youth Music Theatre, where he first encountered actor Jude Law. Miller left school at sixteen, following his GCSEs, to pursue acting professionally.

His earliest screen appearance came at age nine, in an uncredited role in the 1982 BBC Doctor Who episode Kinda. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, he accumulated television credits including Keeping Up Appearances, Inspector Morse, Minder, two separate guest appearances in The Bill, Between the Lines, and Casualty. In 1993, he played Jonathan Hewitt in EastEnders, a role for which he was offered a year-long contract but declined. That same year he appeared in the third installment of Prime Suspect. He made his television film debut in a more prominent capacity in 2003, portraying Lord Byron in the BBC television film Byron, and appeared in the BBC's modernisation of The Canterbury Tales in the episode The Pardoner's Tale.

Miller's film career gained significant momentum in the mid-1990s. He first starred opposite Angelina Jolie in Hackers in 1995, and the two married on 28 March 1996, with Jude Law serving as best man. Shortly after Hackers, Miller was cast as Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting (1996), a role suggested to the production by Ewan McGregor. Miller undertook extensive preparation to render a convincing Scottish accent, spending time in Glasgow and immersing himself in the local dialect. In 1997, he played Billy Prior in the film adaptation of Pat Barker's Regeneration and co-founded the production company Natural Nylon alongside Jude Law; the company operated until 2003. Further film credits from that period include Afterglow (1997), Mansfield Park (1999), Complicity (2000), Love, Honour and Obey (2000), and Wes Craven's Dracula 2000. In 2006, he portrayed cyclist Graeme Obree in The Flying Scotsman, a performance that earned him a London Film Critics' Circle nomination for Actor of the Year. Additional film appearances include Melinda and Melinda (2004), Mindhunters (2004), Endgame (2009), Dark Shadows (2012), Byzantium (2013), and T2 Trainspotting (2017).

On television, Miller took on the title role in the ABC legal comedy-drama Eli Stone, which ran for two seasons and brought him a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actor. He subsequently co-starred with Romola Garai in the 2009 BBC costume drama Emma, playing George Knightley. He then appeared as the recurring antagonist Jordan Chase in the fifth season of Showtime's Dexter, a role that contributed to a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. From 2012 to 2019, Miller starred as a contemporary version of Sherlock Holmes in the CBS crime drama Elementary alongside Lucy Liu, earning a second Satellite Award nomination for Best Actor and winning an IQ Award in 2014 for the portrayal. In 2022, he played former British Prime Minister John Major in the fifth season of Netflix's The Crown.

Miller's stage work has been equally distinguished. In November 1999, he played Brito in Paul Corcoran's Four Nights in Knaresborough at the Tricycle Theatre in London. In March 2004, he played Christian in David Eldridge's Festen at the Almeida Theatre. In March 2011, at the Royal National Theatre, Miller alternated between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Monster opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Frankenstein. The production was broadcast to cinemas worldwide through National Theatre Live and earned Miller the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in 2012. On Broadway, Miller appeared in After Miss Julie and in the play Ink, with his Broadway work spanning the years 2009 to 2019.