Sam Crane

Sam Crane is an English actor born in 1979. He is the son of playwright Richard Crane and theatre director Faynia Williams. Crane studied at Oxford University and subsequently trained at LAMDA, where he received the Nicholas Hytner Award. He is married to filmmaker Pinny Grylls, and together they have a son and a daughter.

Crane's stage career spans productions at major British institutions and on Broadway. He originated the role of Farinelli in Claire van Kampen's Farinelli and the King, performing opposite Mark Rylance at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse before the production transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End and then to the Belasco Theatre on Broadway in 2017. He also portrayed Winston Smith in Headlong's West End production of 1984, and beginning on 13 October 2022 he took on the role of Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre in London. Earlier stage work includes appearances at Shakespeare's Globe, where he played Hotspur and Pistol in Henry IV Parts I and II in 2010 and Roderigo in Othello in 2007, as well as productions at the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, and the Bristol Old Vic, among others.

Beyond the stage, Crane appeared in the 2009 BBC drama series Desperate Romantics as Fred Walters and played Patrick Plunket in a 2017 episode of the Netflix series The Crown. He also provided the voice and performance of Frederick Abberline in Ubisoft's 2015 video game Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

In 2024, Crane co-directed, executive produced, and acted in Grand Theft Hamlet alongside his wife Pinny Grylls. The documentary follows a production of Hamlet staged entirely within the video game Grand Theft Auto Online. The film premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award for best documentary feature. Crane and Grylls subsequently received the Best Debut Director award in the feature documentary category from the British Independent Film Awards.