Tom Conti

Tom Conti is a Scottish stage, film, and television actor born Thomas Antonio Conti on 22 November 1941 in Paisley, Renfrewshire. The son of hairdressers Alfonso Conti and Mary McGoldrick, he was raised Roman Catholic, though he described himself as antireligious in 2011. His father was Italian and his mother was Scottish-born of Irish parentage. Conti received his education at Hamilton Park St Aloysius' College, an independent Catholic boys' school in Glasgow, and subsequently trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He began his professional career with the Dundee Repertory in 1959.

Among the most celebrated achievements of Conti's theatrical career is his performance in Whose Life Is It Anyway?, which he performed in both the West End in 1978 and on Broadway in 1979. The role earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play. Also in 1979, he directed Frank D. Gilroy's Last Licks on Broadway. He later returned to the West End to portray Jeffrey Bernard in Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell in 1989, playing the lead at the Garrick Theatre.

Conti's film career has encompassed a wide range of roles across several decades. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama for his performance in Reuben, Reuben (1983). His other film credits include The Duellists (1977), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), American Dreamer (1984), Saving Grace (1986), The Quick and the Dead (1987), Shirley Valentine (1989), The Tempest (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Paddington 2 (2017). In 2023, he portrayed Albert Einstein in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.

On television, Conti took leading roles in adaptations of Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes and Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests. He appeared in the family series Faerie Tale Theatre, guest-starred on Friends and Cosby, and played opposite Nigel Hawthorne in a long-running series of Vauxhall Astra advertisements in the United Kingdom during the early to mid-1990s. He also appeared in the BBC sitcom Miranda in the 2010 seasonal episode "The Perfect Christmas," playing Miranda's father alongside Miranda Hart and Patricia Hodge. In 2004, Conti published a novel titled The Doctor, concerning a former secret operations pilot for intelligence services; according to the book's foreword, his friend Lynsey De Paul recommended the manuscript to publisher Jeremy Robson.

Conti has been married to Scottish actress Kara Wilson since 1967. Their daughter Nina is an actress who performs as a ventriloquist. Conti has lived in Hampstead in northwest London for several decades. In 2015, he listed his Hampstead home for sale at £17.5 million following a prolonged dispute with his neighbor, the footballer Thierry Henry, over building plans. He also opposed development proposals for Hampstead's Grove Lodge, the 18th-century Grade II listed former home of novelist John Galsworthy. In 2012, a genetic-mapping project conducted by ScotlandsDNA revealed that Conti shares a genetic marker with Napoléon Bonaparte on his father's side, a discovery Conti said caused him to "burst out laughing."