Film, TV, Theatre - Actors and Originators
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor, the greatest writer in the English language, and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 ...
Sacha Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known for his fictional satirical characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard, and Admiral General Aladeen. He adopts a variety of accents and guises for his characters and interacts with ...
Sir Charles Chaplin (1889 –1977) was an English comic actor and filmmaker who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He is became a worldwide icon, probably the world's first, through his screen persona, the Tramp. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era unti...
Rowan Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is an English actor, comedian and writer. He is best known for playing the title roles in Blackadder (1983–1989), Mr. Bean (1990–1995), and in the film series Johnny English (2003–2018). Earlier work includes Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979–1982), The Secret ...
Sir Alec Guinness (1914–2000) was a verstaile, prolific and much-loved English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in the 1950s Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Lavender Hill Mob, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. Ot...
Dame Maggie Smith (born 28 December 1934) is a long-lived, prolific, and immensely popular English actress. With an extensive career on screen and stage beginning in the mid-1950s, Smith has appeared in over 60 films and 70 plays. She is the recipient of multiple accolades, including two Oscars,...
Sir Reginald "Rex" Harrison (1908–1990) was an English actor from Huyton, near Liverpool. Harrison began his career on the stage in 1924. He made his West End debut in 1936 appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, in what was his breakthrough role. He won his first Tony Award ...
Sir Daniel Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English retired actor. He is the only actor to have won three Oscars for Best Actor, and only the third male actor with three competitive Oscars, the sixth performer overall. Additionally, he has received four Best Actor BAFTAs, three SAG Awards, an...
Judi Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress. Regarded as one of Britain's best actresses, she is noted for her versatile work in film and television encompassing several genres, as well as for numerous roles on the stage. Dench has garnered multiple accolades throughout a career spann...
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes (born 22 December 1962) is a powerful, respected English actor, film producer, and director. After success onstage in Shakespeare at the Royal National Theatre, he made his film debut playing Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992). His port...
Jeremy Irons (born 19 September 1948) is a distinguishedly-voiced English actor, and an activist. His acting career began on stage in 1969 with him taking lead roles in West End Shakespearean productions. His break-out TV role was in Brideshead Revisited (1981), one of the greatest British televi...
Benedict Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor who has received various accolades throughout his career, including an Emmy, a BATA, and an Olivier. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for Frankenstein and the Emmy for Sherlock. His performances in The Imitation Game an...
Deborah Kerr (1921–2007) was a British actress who holds the record - six - for most Best Actress Oscar nominations without a win. Her definitive role was as the Governess Anna Leonowens duelling with Yul Brynner in the King and I (1956).
Albert Finney (1936–2019) was an English actor, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s. He was one of that generation's enormously gifted "Angry Young Men", who threatened to disrupt the comfortable conventio...
Sir Ian McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. His career spans seven decades, in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Over his career he has received numerous awards including seven Oliviers, a Tony, a Golden Globea, and a Screen...
Honor Blackman (1925 –2020) was an English actress, known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers (1962–1964), Bond girl Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964), Julia Daggett in Shalako (1968), and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Bond Producer Albert Broccoli said, "The Brits would love he...
Peter O'Toole (1932–2013) was a British stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art along with Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Brian Bedford in "the most remarkable class" RADA ever had. He gained recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the Engli...
Hugh Laurie (born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, author, comedian, director, musician and singer. He is best known for portraying Dr. Gregory House on the Fox TV medical drama House (2004–2012), for which he earned £250,000 ($409,000) per episode and received two Golden Globes. He was listed...
Sir Michael Caine (born 14 March 1933) is an English actor, and is a British film and cultural icon known for his distinctive South London accent. In a seven decade-career, he has appeared in more than 160 films which have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. He is one of only two actors nominate...
David Niven (1910–1983) was a British actor, memoirist, and novelist. He won the Best Actor Oscar for Major Pollock in Separate Tables (1958), and starred as Squadron Leader Carter in A Matter of Life and Death, Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, "The Phantom" in The Pink Panther, and J...
Sir Anthony Hopkins CBE (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor, film director, and film producer. One of the world's most distinguished and well-known actors, he is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Oscars, two Emmys , a BATA and four BAFTAs. He has also received an honorary Go...
Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor whose career spans six decades and various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, and Saturn Awards. In 1993, TV Guide named him the Best Dr...
Dame Angela Lansbury (born 16 October 1925) is an Irish-British actress and singer who has played many film, theater, and television roles. Her career has spanned over 80 years, much of it in the United States; her work has received much international attention as well. Upon the death of Olivia d...
Cary Grant (1904–1986) was a British-American actor. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanour, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing, he was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men from the 1930s until the mid-1960s. In 1999, the American Film Institu...
Keira Knightley (born 26 March 1985) is an English actress, starring in independent films, big-budget blockbusters, and period dramas. Her accolades include two Empire Awards and nominations for two Oscars, three BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, one SAG Award and one Olivier. She was appointed an OBE...
Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921–1999) was an English actor, novelist, and screenwriter. Initially a matinée idol in films such as Doctor in the House (1954), he made 63 films between 1939 and 1991, and was nominated for five Best Actor BAFTAs, winning twice, for The Servant and for Darling. In 1991, he w...
Donald Sinden (1923–2014) was an English actor. He achieved early fame in the 1950s in Doctor in the House, Simba, Eyewitness and Doctor at Large. He then became highly regarded as an award-winning Shakespearean actor and television star, winning a West End Award for King Lear, and starring in T...
Roger Moore (1927–2017) was an English actor, who notably played secret agent James Bond between 1973 and 1985 in seven films from Live and Let Die to A View to a Kill. Inspired by his friend Audrey Hepburn, Moore was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991 and was knighted by Queen Elizab...
Vanessa Redgrave (born 30 January 1937) is an English actress and activist. Throughout her career spanning over six decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Oscar, a BATA, two Golden Globes Awards, two Emmys, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony Award, making her one ...
Liam Neeson (born 7 June 1952) is a highly-accoladed Northern Irish actor with nominations for an Oscar, a BAFTA, two Tonys, and three Golden Globes. His performance in the title role of Schindler's List (1993 helped) win the Oscar for Best Picture and established him in Hollywood as a bankable l...
Peter Sellers CBE (1925–1980) was an English actor, comedian and singer. His breakthrough came in the 1950s BBC Radio comedy The Goon Show. He went on to play leading roles, often comedic, in Dr. Strangelove (1964), What's New, Pussycat? (1965), Being There (1979) and five Pink Panther films (19...
Dawn French (born 11 October 1957) is a British actress, comedian, presenter and writer. She is known for writing and starring on the comedy show French and Saunders with her best friend, Jennifer Saunders, and playing the lead role in the sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. She has been nominated for se...
John Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge University Footlights, he achieved success in the 1960s Frost Report, then in the late 1960s, co-founded and starred in Monty Python's Flying Circus, and the subsequent films ...
