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Simon Russell Beale CBE (born January 12, 1961, in Penang, Malaya) is a British actor.

Russell Beale's stocky frame and soft speaking style are essential elements of his stage persona. His performances have been lauded for their subtlety, wit, intelligence and emotional power.

Contents 1 Childhood 2 Stage roles 3 Television roles 4 Awards and accomplishments 5 Films and TV 6 Links

Several members of Beale's family had careers in medicine. He was first drawn to performance when, at the age of eight, he became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral.

At the age of fourteen he gave his first theatre performance playing Desdemona in Othello at Clifton College's Redgrave theatre; in the sixth form he also perfomed Rosencratz and Guildenstern are dead. After Clifton he went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and obtained a first in English, after which he was offered a place to do a PhD. He graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1983.

Russell Beale first came to the attention of theatre-goers in the late 1980s with a series of outstanding comic performances, on occasion extremely camp, in such plays as The Man of Mode by George Etherege and Restoration by Edward Bond at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He broadened his range in the early 1990s with moving performances as Konstantin in Chekhov's The Seagull, as Oswald in Ibsen's Ghosts and as Edgar in King Lear. It was at the RSC that he first worked with Sam Mendes who directed him there as Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, as Richard III and as a striking Ariel in The Tempest, in the last of which he revealed a fine tenor voice.

Sam Mendes also directed him as Iago in Othello at the Royal National Theatre and in his farewell productions at the Donmar Warehouse, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, in which he played the title role and Twelfth Night, in which he played Malvolio.

Since 1995 he has been a regular at the Royal National Theatre where his roles have included Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone opposite Michael Gambon, George in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and the lead in Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones written especially for him. In 1999 he was a key part of Trevor Nunn's ensemble, playing in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Edward Bulwer Lytton's Money and Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk. In autumn 2006 he played Galileo in David Hare's adaption of Brecht's Life of Galileo and Face in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist.

His performance at the National as Hamlet attracted attention and provoked commentary; some considered Russell Beale an unlikely choice to embody the quintessentially youthful and contemplative hero once played by virile actors like Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Mel Gibson. Beale's performance, more restrained and conversational in nature, was a resounding success, becoming one of the most noteworthy Hamlets of recent decades.

In 2007 he reprised his Broadway role as King Arthur in the Monty Python musical Spamalot at the Palace Theatre, London.

In 1997 he portrayed the pivotal role of Kenneth Widmerpool in a television adaptation of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, for which he won the Best Actor category at the British Academy Television Awards in 1998. He also played the King of Hearts in a 1999 television adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

He has won the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award three times (for his performances in Volpone, Candide and Uncle Vanya). In 2003 he was appointed CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. He is President of the Anthony Powell Society

• John and Abigail Adams: America's First Power Couple (2006 TV movie) - John Adams
• Dunkirk (2004 TV movie) - Winston Churchill
• The Young Visiters (2003 TV movie) - Prince of Wales
• The Gathering (2002) - Luke Fraser
• Blackadder Back & Forth (1999 short) - Napoleon
• An Ideal Husband (1999) - Sir Edward
• Alice in Wonderland (1999 TV movie) - King of Hearts and Society Man
• The Temptation of Franz Schubert (1997 TV movie) - Franz Schubert
• A Dance to the Music of Time (1997 TV mini-series) - Kenneth Widmerpool
• Hamlet (1996) - Second gravedigger
• Persuasion (1995) - Charles Musgrove
• The Mushroom Picker (1993 TV mini-series) - Anthony
• Downtown Lagos (1992 TV mini-series)
• Orlando (1992) - Earl of Moray
• A Very Peculiar Practice (TV series)
• Art and Illusion (1988) - Mark Stibbs

• Simon Russell Beale at the Internet Movie Database
• Simon Russell Beale at the Internet Broadway Database
• National Theatre: Platforms
• Russell Beale news
• Broadway.com Interview

Preceded by Tim Curry March 17, 2005 (Opening) - December 20, 2005

Actor playing King Arthur on Spamalot December 21, 2005 - April 26, 2006

Succeeded by Harry Groener April 27, 2006 - Incumbent (October 31, 2006)