Brittish Actors

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Karl Howman
Karl Howman
Karl Howman

Karl Howman was born in 1952 in London.   He is well known for his performance in the late 1980’s British television series “Brush Strokes”.   His movies include “That Will be the Day” in 1973 with David Essex and Robert Lindsay.   He has starred in the West End in “Me and My Girl”.

IMDB entry:

Karl is a very talented actor, who will be most remembered for playing “Jacko”, in the brilliant comedy series, Brush Strokes (1986). Jacko was a painter and decorator, and very much a “Jack the lad”. In this hugely entertaining series, Karl played a ladies’ man, who never has any intention of settling down. Karl has also starred in Babes in the Wood(1998), Bad Boys (1995), and Mulberry (1992), and had guest roles in programmes such as The Bill (1984).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Colin Peppiatt (colinpeppiatt@hotmail.co

Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall

Herbert Marshall was a British actor who had an amazingly long career in Hollywood movies from the late 1920’s until the late 1960’s.   He was born in London in 1890.   He was a soldier in World War One and lost a leg in combat.   He was leading man to some of the major actresses of their time, including Great Garbo, Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins and Joan Crawford.   He was especially terrific in “The Little Foxes” in 1941.   His last movie was “The Third Day” in 1965 with George Peppard and Elizabeth Ashley.

TCM overview:Urbane mature, British leading man whose good looks and finely modulated voice made him an ideal romantic lead. Marshall starred opposite such stars as Marlene Dietrich, in “Blonde Venus” (1932), and Greta Garbo, in “The Painted Veil” (1934), as well as in two Hitchcock films, “Murder” (1930) and “Foreign Correspondent” (1940). He proved an able opponent-husband to Bette Davis in “The Letter” (1940) and “The Little Foxes” (1941), both directed by William Wyler, and displayed a delightful flair for comedy in Ernst Lubitsch’s brilliant “Trouble in Paradise” (1932). The son of actors Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner, he was married to actresses Edna Best (1928-1940) and Boots Mallory. Marshall lost a leg during WWI and his wooden replacement limb was known to trouble him considerably through the years.

Charlie Drake
Charlie Drake
Charlie Drake

Charlie Drake was a very popular English comedian who had a TV following before a cinema career opened up for him.   He was born in 1925 in Elephant and Castle, South London.   His first TV series was “Laughter in Store”.   His starred in four movies “Sands of the Desert” in 1960, “Petticoat Pirates” with Anne Heywood, “The Cracksman” with George Sanders and Nyree Dawn Porter and “Mister Ten Percent” in 1967.   He died in 2006.

Denis Gifford’s “Independent” obituary:

Charlie Drake’s first joke – “A little boy had a tooth out and asked the dentist if he could keep it. Why? I want to take it home, put some sugar on it and watch it ache!”

Actually it wasn’t Charlie Drake’s joke, it was Max Miller’s. He heard it on the wireless. And he wasn’t Charlie Drake, anyway. He was Charles Edward Springall, age nine. Drake came much later, borrowed from his mother, the former Violet Drake. Like many comedians, if not all of them, Charlie Drake began with jokes borrowed from others, but once his real career in comedy got under way via television, he became the most original slapstick comedian in the country, easily out- slapping those few who had attempted visual comedy in the silent film era.

Born in Elephant and Castle, London, in 1925, the son of a newspaper seller who took racing bets on the quiet, little Charlie was only eight when he answered an advertisement in the South London Press and was first in the queue to audition for the great top-of-the-bill coster comedian Harry Champion. He sang that master’s most popular hit, “Boiled Beef and Carrots”, and promptly won a place in the choirboy chorus backing the star in his grand finale, “Any Old Iron” (pronounced “I-hern”). His reward: a six-day booking for half a crown (12 1/2p).

No further bookings ensued, so young Charlie augmented his non-existent pocket money doing a pre-school paper round and a post-school apprenticeship to a cats-meat man (tuppence a stick-ful). His education was at the Victory Place Junior School where the only prize he won was for Scripture: he was able to name Mary’s husband. Moving up to Paragon Row Seniors he read the “Just William” books and formed a William-style Secret Society called the Red Hand Gang. Show business struck again when he did a deal with the manager of the Elephant and Castle Picture Palace: in return for winning the ten-shilling (50p) prize at every amateur talent contest, he slipped the manager five bob (25p).

Drake was 14 when he left school, in the summer of 1939; he also left home. He became an electrician’s mate, the first of innumerable jobs, all of which would find their way into his television and later film situations. By night he was an Air Raid Precautions messenger boy. He devised his own way to extinguish incendiary bombs: old ladies’ knickers stuffed with sand. Then he joined the Naafi as a baker. His fruit cakes were famous until he was sacked for using too many rationed currants.

He tried for proper war service and was instantly rejected by the Navy. He was only 5 feet 1 1/2 inches tall. “I was raised on condensed milk,” he explained. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force and was, surprisingly, taken on and trained as a rear gunner. “I was the right size for the little turret.” He promptly put in for all the services shows he could – Ralph Reader’s “RAF Gang Show,” Ensa, “Airmen in Skirts” – and was rejected by them all. But one useful thing happened: while training in Northern Ireland he met an oversize pilot named Jack Edwardes, who would in time become Drake’s first partner on television. Drake’s main active service was in India, where he caught dysentery and became the only airman who needed to have his shorts shortened.

On demob Drake formed his first double act with a friend called Sidney Cant. They sang “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage” at the King’s Arms pub at the Elephant. Unable to afford the tram fare, Drake walked up West every night to watch the big star comedians leaving their stage doors.

After failing his first BBC audition for Workers Playtime – he did his half-hour act in the wrong studio so the producer never saw him – he changed his name to Charlie Smart and won a provincial variety tour opening the show wearing a white trilby and a brown-and-red check suit. His first broadcast came from this, and he sat up all night writing 200 fan letters under 200 assumed names, posting them to Broadcasting House. They all came back to him unopened.

Somebody told him that Charlie Smart was the name of a popular broadcasting organist, so once again he changed his name. This time he came up with a permanent winner, Charlie Drake. Unfortunately it didn’t help his career: he failed to pass his first audition at the Windmill Theatre – and failed a further six times. He found steadier work in the summer of 1953 as a Butlin’s Redcoat. He taught campers ju-jitsu and boxing, he called bingo, he clowned for the kiddies, and he stole £60 a week from the bingo take. At the end of the season Billy Butlin himself sacked him, and said he knew all along about the thefts, but had kept him on as his one and only ju-jitsu coach.

Deciding to try his luck with an agent, Drake now joined Phyllis Rounce, and at her office re-encountered Jack Edwardes, also looking for comedy work. His 6ft 3in height – 1ft 1 1/2in taller than the diminutive Drake – looked funny before they even started, and Rounce immediately got them a date at the Stage Door Canteen. They did a table tennis act which made the services audience roar. Several guest spots on BBC Children’s Television followed; the comic career of Charlie Drake was under way.

Michael Westmore, head of BBC Children’s TV, absconded to the newly formed ITV for London, Associated-Rediffusion, and took with him Drake and Edwardes. Drake was to devise and script an afternoon series for the double act. He called their characters “Big Jack and Little Mack”, but Westmore renamed them “Mick and Montmorency”.

The show was christened Jobstoppers and started on 30 September 1955. Every week the slap-happy pair tried their hands at a different job, and each week the show began with “Hello, my darlin’s!” and concluded with the cry of “It’s teeee-time!” Within weeks Drake had created two new national catch-phrases, among the young viewers at any rate. And to crown his success, TV Fun, the small screen’s answer to Radio Fun, starred them in a full-page strip drawn by the comic’s best cartoonist, Reg Parlett.

Ronnie Waldman, formerly the king of radio’s “Puzzle Corner”, now head of Light Entertainment at BBC Television, sat up and took notice. He offered Drake a one-off try-out in grown-up time and the half-hour Laughter in Store (3 January 1957) was such a slap-bang success that a full-blown series of six started on 6 May. Satisfyingly entitled Drake’s Progress (he would later use it as the title of his 1986 autobiography), the show was devised and co-written with him by the very professional George Wadmore, and was given the excellent supporting cast of Irene Handl, Warren Mitchell and the rotund Willoughby Goddard. Sadly the tall stalwart Jack Edwardes was nowhere to be seen. That particular partnership had been suddenly dissolved.

This was the first sign of what most people would call a basic flaw in Drake’s character, a supreme ego that put himself first in everything he did. It was once common among the great comedians (Charlie Chaplin, for example) but it takes more than supreme self-confidence to win in this age of television. No sooner had Drake been granted a second series of Progress, and been awarded a fresh team of writers in Sid Green and Dick Hills (who would prove their worth in scripting for Morecambe and Wise), than he demanded a showdown with Ronnie Waldman, the sacking of Green and Hills, and the right to be solo scripter of his own series. Drake won.

Drake’s television career now shot ahead in series after series, each show centralising on a classic slapstick sequence which, as was typical of the time, was performed live. For 10 years the title of the show was, simply, Charlie Drake, except for a brief sojourn at ATV in 1963 when it was called The Charlie Drake Show. The formula was always the same, with Drake trying his hand as an overalled workman in a different job each week. The slapstick climax would never be bettered until pre- filming became possible for Michael Crawford’s Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em, the only series comparable.

The climax to all this slapstickery came in 1961 with “Bingo Madness”, an episode which closed with Drake thrown through a bookcase, then out of a window, and crashing through a door. The camera panned down: there was Drake unconscious on the floor. Rushed to hospital, he was in a coma for days. The series was cancelled and Drake missed his first invited appearance at the Royal Variety Show. All would end well; in time he would star in no fewer than nine royal shows. And, when colour television arrived on BBC2 in 1968, his series would win the Golden Rose of Montreux.

Television led to many a stage show and pantomime. His first was as the King of Tyrolia in Sleeping Beauty at the Palladium. Co-stars were Bruce Forsyth and Bernard “I Only Arsked” Bresslaw. In the No 1 dressing room for the first time in his life, Drake complained and demanded that it be redecorated. It was; that was 1958. Much later, in 1974, another panto would be his big downfall. This was Jack and the Beanstalk at the Alhambra, Bradford. Drake wanted a local girl in the cast. The actors’ union Equity objected. The management paid her to leave. Equity fined Drake £760. He refused to pay, was suspended, banned from all provincial theatres, and found himself out of work for a year.

Drake was luckier in films. Associated British signed him up for several Technicolor extravaganzas. First came Sands of the Desert (1960) directed by the comedy specialist John Paddy Carstairs. A pretty newcomer, Sarah Branch, co-starred with a bunch of British “foreigners”: Peter Arne, Peter Illing, Harold Kasket, Eric Pohlmann, and many more. Drake was the travel agent who thwarted the wicked sheikh and opened a holiday camp in the desert.

Then came Petticoat Pirates (1961) directed by David Macdonald, who once did more serious stuff. Drake, playing under his own name, was a stoker whose ship is taken over by a group of renegade women led by Anne Heywood (ex Violet Pretty). The Cracksman (1963) came next, made in CinemaScope. Peter Graham Scott directed Drake as a jailed locksmith stealing gems from a museum. George Sanders, surprisingly, co-starred, with the TV favourite Nyree Dawn Porter as the girl. Mister Ten Per Cent (1967) was the last Drake feature proper, with Scott directing again and some pretty ladies: Annette Andre, Una Stubbs and Joyce Blair to name a few. Drake played Percy Pointer, a builder who writes a dramatic play that succeeds as a comedy.

His last films were a series for the Children’s Film Foundation entitled Professor Popper’s Problems (1975), directed by Gerry O’Hara. This set of six shorts was the only time he did not write or co-write the screenplays. The main plot point was that he invented the shrinking pill.

After several very big successes with records, most notably the hilarious “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back” (produced by the brilliant George Martin), Drake’s best ever television series came in 1978. This was ATV’s The Worker with Drake back in his old character of the willing but useless handyman who will try anything and fail at everything. He sang the signature song, which was based on the music-hall queen Lily Morris’s long-lost hit “He’s Only a Working Man”. Lew Schwartz wrote, Alan Tarrant directed, and Henry McGee played the manager of the Labour Exchange, Mr Pugh (“pronounced Poo!”). McGee, a brilliant comic actor, was later acclaimed by Drake as his “closest and dearest friend”.

Suddenly Drake turned away from slapstick and comedy. He played Smallweed in the BBC TV serialisation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1985). He played Ubu Roi in Spike Milligan’s variation of Alfred Jarry’s play, directed by Charles Jarowitz. He was in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1988), and in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (1992) he was Nagg. He even won a Drama Award for his role as Davies in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker (1983).

Drake’s extraordinary career was recognised rather too early by Eamonn Andrews in This Is Your Life back in 1961. The extremes of his personality are perhaps best shown in two opposing quotes. When he won the Golden Rose of Montreux he said, “I was voted the funniest man in the world.” When he appeared as a guest in the panel game Looks Familiar he said, “I am the only person never to recognise Shirley Temple.”

Denis Gifford

* Denis Gifford died 20 May 2000

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Lynn Farleigh
Lynn Farleigh
Lynn Farleigh

Lynn Farleigh was born in 1942 in Bristol.   She featured in two very popular TV series “Bill Brand” in 1976 and “Wycliffe”in 1996.   Her movies include “The Ice House” in 1997 and “Blind Flight” in 2003.

IMDB entry:

Lynn Farleigh was born on May 3, 1942 in Bath, Somerset, England as Marilyn J. Farleigh. She is an actress, known for Watership Down (1978), Miss Potter (2006) and FairyTale: A True Story (1997). She is married to John Woodvine. She was previously married toMichael Jayston and David Yip.

All three of her husbands – Michael JaystonDavid Yip and John Woodvine – made guest appearances in Doctor Who (1963).
Mother of Joe (b. 1972) and Matthew Turner (b. 1973) from her relationship with Keith Turner.
Daughter of Joseph Sydney (1896-1978) and Marjorie Norah (née Clark) Farleigh (1901-1979).
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson

Bruce Robinson wasborn in London in 1946.   He is best known as the director of the cult movie “Withnail and I” in 1986.   Previously he had featured in such movies as Franco Zefferelli’s “Romeo and |Juliet” in 1968 and “The Story of Adele H” opposite Isabelle Adjani.

TCM overview:

Robinson was chosen to appear as Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” during his third year of drama school and acted in several films–notably “The Story of Adele H.” (1975), as Lieutenant Pinson–before giving up performing in 1975 to concentrate on writing.

It took ten years and 20 screenplays before Robinson’s work reached the screen, in the shape of the Oscar-winning “The Killing Fields” (1984), directed by Roland Joffe. Robinson parlayed the success of “Fields” into his first directing assignment, the critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical “Withnail and I” (1987). A laconic study of two “resting” actors set in the late 1960s, the film demonstrated Robinson’s wry sense of humor, keen powers of social observation and ability to coax fine performances from his actors, Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant. Grant also starred in Robinson’s “How to Get Ahead in Advertising” (1988), a blazing satire in which a boil on an ad exec’s neck develops a life of its own and begins to spout apocalyptic right-wing ideology. Despite moments of brilliant high farce, the film failed to draw as wide an audience as “Withnail”.

Critical response to “Jennifer 8” (1992), a serial killer-thriller starring Andy Garcia and Uma Thurman, was generally poor, though some claimed the film’s flaws were the result of excessive studio intervention during the making of the film.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw

My favourite autograph and one of the rarest is of the brilliant actor Robert Shaw. He has starred in such magnificent movies as “Jaws”, “The Deep”, “The Sting”, “The Taking of Pelham 1…2…3..”, “A Man For All Seasons” and “From Russia With Love”. Sadly he died of a heart attack at his Irish home in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo in 1978 at the age of only 51. He was married to the beautiful Mary Ure(who starred in “Where Eagles Dare” with Clint Eastwood) who also died very young aged 42 in 1975.

TCM overview:

A rough-hewn British character actor who played more leading roles later in his career, Robert Shaw went from being typecast as tough-guy villains to proving his versatility in a wide range of performances. Shaw had his start on the stage in the late 1940s and quickly segued to the screen where he broke through as an assassin for SPECTRE in “From Russia with Love” (1963). But it was his Oscar-nominated turn as King Henry VIII in “A Man for All Seasons” (1966) that helped shed new light on the actor, leading to a variety of characters in films like “Battle of Britain” (1969), “A Town Called Hell” (1971) and “Young Winston” (1972). Shaw then entered his most fruitful period to play ruthless mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973) and criminal mastermind Mr. Blue in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974), which paved the way for his most iconic performance as salty Quint in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975). From there, Shaw was a leading man in a number of major studio films like “Black Sunday” (1977), “Force 10 from Navarone” (1977) and “Avalanched Express” (1979). But at the height of his career, Shaw suffered a fatal heart attack. Whether on screen or as the author of award-winning novels, Shaw was a unique talent the likes of whom would not be seen again.

Born on Aug. 9, 1927 in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, Shaw was raised by his father, Thomas, a physician, and his mother, Doreen, a former nurse. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Scotland and when he was 12, Shaw’s father – a manic depressive and alcoholic – committed suicide. As a result, the family moved to Cornwall where Shaw attended the independent Truro School and briefly taught school in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1949, he made his stage debut with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and later in the year toured Australia with the Old Vic. Shaw soon made his London stage debut in a West End production of “Caro William” (1951) and a few years later, transitioned to the screen with minor supporting roles in “The Dam Busters” (1955) and “A Hill in Korea” (1956), before returning to the stage to star in his own play, “Off the Mainland” (1956). Following a turn in the British crime thriller “Man from Tangier” (1957), he spent 39 episodes as the lead pirate on the children-themed series “The Buccaneers” (ITV, 1956-57).

Following the show, Shaw went back to the big screen for small roles in “Sea Fury” (1958) and “Libel” (1959), before landing episodes of British series like “The Four Just Men” (ITV, 1959-1960) and “Danger Man” (ITV, 1960-68). After playing Leontes in the feature adaptation of “The Winter’s Tale” (1961), he played cunning SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in “From Russia with Love” (1963). At this point, Shaw became a published author with The Hiding Place (1960) and The Sun Doctor, the latter of which won the 1962 Hawthornden Prize. He next played King Claudius in Grigori Kozintsev’s adaptation of “Hamlet” (1964), the Ghost of Christmas Future in “Carol for Another Christmas” (1964), and a fictional colonel fighting in “Battle of the Bulge” (1965), an epic war film about the famed World War II battle starring Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson. In “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), Shaw was King Henry VIII to Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More and Orson Welles’ Cardinal Wolsey, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor – the only such honor of his career.

Shaw went on to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the critically derided Western “Custer of the West” (1967), before starring in William Friedkin’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” (1968). In the “Battle of Britain” (1969), Shaw was cast alongside British heavyweights like Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine and Susannah York for this epic and surprisingly historically accurate depiction of England’s fight to stop the Luftwaffe from bombing Britain back to the Stone Age. That same year, he starred opposite Plummer in the historical drama “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” (1969), while the following year he had his first screenwriting credit with “Figures in a Landscape” (1970), wherein he played an escaped convict alongside Malcolm McDowell who try to escape from the secret police of an unidentified totalitarian country. Following a leading performance in the little known Western “A Town Called Hell” (1971), he was Lord Randolph Churchill, father to Winston Churchill (Simon Ward) in “Young Winston” (1972), a British-made biopic about the early years of the future prime minister.

Though a well-known actor both in Britain and America, Shaw had yet to hit his most fertile period, which commenced with his turn as ruthless Irish mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973), who becomes the target of a long con by two confidence men (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) after he kills their friend and mentor (Robert Earl Jones). Shaw’s performance as the barely contained Lonnegan was a terrific counterpoint to Newman’s devil-may-care turn as expert con artist Henry Gondorff, which was perfectly exemplified in a card game where Lonnegan is out-cheated by Gondoff – one of the more memorable scenes of this multi-Oscar winning film. Shaw next played Mr. Blue, a criminal mastermind who leads a gang of thieves into a New York subway to steal $1 million in the commercial and critical action hit “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974). Standing in Mr. Blue’s way is a gruff, but determined transit cop (Walter Matthau), who contends with the chaos of multiple city agencies and a reluctant mayor (Lee Wallace) while trying to figure out just how the gang plans to escape the subway tunnel while surrounded by police.

The following year, Shaw delivered his most iconic performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975) playing Quint, a salty old shark fisherman who hunts down a killer great white with a landlubber police chief (Roy Scheider) and a know-it-all marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss). Shaw’s turn as the grizzled seafarer was the film’s most memorable, particularly in his confrontations with Dreyfuss’ bookish biologist and in his haunting recount of the sinking of the doomed U.S.S. Indianapolis. The movie was a monster hit and the highest-grossing film ever made at the time, making “Jaws” Shaw’s most successful film on all fronts. From there, Shaw starred alongside James Earl Jones as two pirates in “Swashbuckler” (1976) and played the Sheriff of Nottingham to Sean Connery’s Robin Hood in “Robin and Marian” (1976). He went on to search for sunken treasure with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset in “The Deep” (1977) and was an Israeli military officer trying to thwart a crazed Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) from blowing up the Super Bowl in “Black Sunday” (1977). Shaw next starred in the sequel “Force 10 From Navarone” (1977), taking over the Gregory Peck role as the leader of a special forces group that tries to blow up a bridge with a traitor in their midst. After completing the filming of “Avalanche Express” (1979), where he played a Russian general who defects to the United States, Shaw suffered a sudden heart attack while home in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland. He was only 51 years old.

By Shawn Dwyer

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw
Vincent Ball
Vincent Ball
Vincent Ball

Vincent Ball was born in 1923 in New South Wales, Australia.   He was featured in such movies as “A Town Like Alice” in 1956, “Robbery Under Arms”, “Danger Within” and “Carry On Cruising”.   He also has a role in the lonf running UK TV series “Crossroads”.

IMDB entry:

With the outbreak of war Vincent left his job with the Australian General Electric Company and became a pilot with the Australian Air Force in England. He returned to Australia and his old job in 1945 but couldn’t settle. He tried amateur dramatics but his dialect was a mixture of Australian, Cockney, due to his stay in London, and Canadian with having mixed with Canadian forces. To correct his accent he had elocution lessons which resulted in him marrying his teacher, Doreen, and them having a daughter, Catherine. With his diction corrected he wrote letters asking for auditions. One of these was to the Rank Organisation who replied asking him to call and see them if he was in the neighbourhood. He got a job as a stoker on a cargo ship but the journey took six months instead of the expected six weeks. Undaunted tough he presented himself at Ranks offices where impressed with his enthusiasm they gave him a job as stand in for Donald Houston in an underwater fight with an octopus in the film The Blue Lagoon. He then won a scholarship to RADA from where he went into rep working his way up to juvenile lead in Rain Before Seven, Barnett’s Folly and Nitro. He got a few bit parts in films before moving into slightly larger parts in such as A Town Like Alice, Robbery Under Arms,and Danger Within. He moved back to Australia in the 70’s appearing in various TV series and films such as Breaker Morant, Phar Lap and Muriel’s Wedding

– IMDb Mini Biography By: tonyman 5

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Nicholas Rowe
Nicholas Rowe
Nicholas Rowe

Nicholas Rowe was born in 1966 in Edinburgh.   He is best known for her performance in 1986 in “Young Sherlock Holmes”.  His partner was the actress Lou Gish who died in 2006.

IMDB entry:

peaks fluent Spanish, French and Portugese. Lives in London. Attended Bristol University (BA in Hispanic Studies). Has appeared in numerous British plays and television programs. Most recognized by Americans as Sherlock Holmes in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). The son of a member of Parliament.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Beth

While a student at Britain’s prestigious Eton School, this son of a member of Parliament was among the seniors allowed to read for Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), his only starring role to date. Awaiting a follow-up, the aristocrat worked in a London office doing market research, and has worked only sporadically in films ever since.
Stars in “Nation”, a play based on the book by Terry Pratchett, at the National Theatre in London. [November 2009]
Stars in “Victory”, a play by Howard Barker, at the Arcola Theatre in London. [March 2009]