Simon Callow

Simon Phillip Hugh Callow, born on 15 June 1949 in Streatham, South London, is an English actor and director whose career has spanned stage, film, and television. The son of Yvonne Mary Callow, a secretary of Danish and German ancestry, and Neil Francis Callow, a businessman of French descent, he was raised primarily by his mother and grandmothers after his father left when he was eighteen months old. At age nine, he and his mother traveled to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in an attempt to reconcile with his father; when that effort failed, Callow spent three years at a boarding school in South Africa before returning to Britain at age twelve. He was raised as a Catholic and educated at the London Oratory School in West Brompton. He briefly attended Queen's University Belfast, where he was active in the gay liberation movement, before leaving after one year to complete a three-year acting course at the Drama Centre London.

His path into the theatre began when he wrote a fan letter to Laurence Olivier, then artistic director of the National Theatre, and received a reply suggesting he join the box-office staff. Observing actors at rehearsal convinced him to pursue acting himself. He made his stage debut in 1973 in The Three Estates at the Assembly Rooms Theatre in Edinburgh. In the early 1970s he performed with the Gay Sweatshop theatre company in Martin Sherman's Passing By, and in 1977 he took roles in the Joint Stock Theatre Company's production of Epsom Downs. In 1979 he starred in Snoo Wilson's The Soul of the White Ant at the Soho Poly.

Callow's breakthrough came in 1979 when he originated the title role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the National Theatre, a performance for which he received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination. That same year he appeared at the National Theatre as Orlando in As You Like It, and in 1980 as Fulganzio in Life of Galileo. He also appeared in the 1983 BBC original cast radio production of Amadeus. When director Miloš Forman adapted the play for film in 1984, Callow joined the production in the role of Emanuel Schikaneder. Also at the National Theatre, he appeared as Verlaine in Total Eclipse in 1982 and Lord Foppington in The Relapse in 1983. At the Lyric Hammersmith he took the title role in Faust in 1988 and directed The Infernal Machine with Dame Maggie Smith in 1986. In 1985 he played Molina in Kiss of the Spiderwoman at the Bush Theatre, London.

His film work brought him to wider audiences throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He appeared as the Reverend Mr. Beebe in A Room with a View in 1985, earning a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination, and as Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, which brought him a second BAFTA nomination in the same category. Other notable film roles include Maurice in 1987, Howards End in 1992, Shakespeare in Love in 1998, and The Phantom of the Opera in 2004. He portrayed Count Fosco, the villain of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, both on film in 1997 and on stage in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in the West End in 2005.

On television, Callow's first broadcast role was in the Carry On Laughing episode "Orgy and Bess" in 1975, though it was cut from the final print. He starred as Tom Chance, an eccentric individual prone to coincidences, in the Channel 4 situation comedy Chance in a Million beginning in 1984. He portrayed Napoleon in The Man of Destiny in 1981 and appeared with Saeed Jaffrey in the 1994 British television drama series Little Napoleons. He played the recurring role of the Duke of Sandringham in the Starz period series Outlander from 2014 to 2016, and portrayed Pliny the Elder in the CBBC children's drama Roman Mysteries in 2007. He played Armand Duquesne in Marvel's Hawkeye on Disney+. Additional television appearances include Midsomer Murders, Rome, Angels in America, Doctor Who, Galavant, and The Witcher. In December 2022 he appeared as Dick in the BBC dark comedy Christmas special Inside No. 9, "The Bones of St Nicholas."

Callow has also portrayed Charles Dickens across multiple television projects, a connection that extended to his Broadway work. In 2002 he appeared on Broadway in The Mystery of Charles Dickens, for which he received a Theatre World Award that same year. On stage he has continued to take on substantial roles, including Pozzo in Sean Mathias's 2009 production of Waiting for Godot alongside Ian McKellen as Estragon, Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, and Ronald Pickup as Lucky, which toured Britain before a run at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He performed the one-man play Being Shakespeare, written by Jonathan Bate and directed by Tom Cairns, beginning with a national tour in 2010 under the title Shakespeare: the Man from Stratford, followed by a West End debut at the Trafalgar Studios on 15 June 2011, a revival in March 2012, and a further West End return at the Harold Pinter Theatre in March 2014. In 2008 he appeared at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada in There Reigns Love, a performance of Shakespeare's sonnets, and at the Edinburgh Festival performed adaptations of Charles Dickens's "Dr. Marigold" and "Mr. Chops," directed by Patrick Garland, with subsequent runs at the Riverside Studios and on tour in 2011. In February 2008 he played the psychiatrist in the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of Peter Shaffer's Equus. In 2022 he joined the UK revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes, replacing Gary Wilmot as Elisha Whitney, completing a UK tour before a run at the Barbican Centre.

As a director, Callow won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Musical in 1992 for Carmen Jones. That same year he directed Shades by Sharman MacDonald and a production of My Fair Lady featuring costumes by Jasper Conran. In 1995 he directed a stage version of Les Enfants du Paradis for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has also written about the theatre, including Being An Actor in 1984, a critique of director-dominated theatre that also contained autobiographical material about his early career. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1999 for his services to acting. He has also received a Screen Actors Guild Award among his accolades.