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SIMON CALLOW
Actor and director, Simon Callow CBE, also renowned throughout
the UK as a writer and commentator on classical music, presents
the new television series CLASSICAL DESTINATIONS (2005). He
will appear in each of the thirteen episodes, offering his personal
reflections on some of the greatest classical composers while
visiting the European cities in which they lived and worked.
Simon Callow’s association with music is known internationally
through his work in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. He created
the title role of Mozart when the play premiered at the National
Theatre in 1979, and when Amadeus was turned into the multi
Academy Award-winning film in 1984 he played the part of the
impresario Schikaneder.
He studied briefly at Queen’s University,Belfast, then
trained as an actor at Drama Centre London. After seasons in
repertory at Lincoln and at the Traverse in Edinburgh, he made
his London début in the Traverse Theatre production of
C P Taylor’s Schippel which later transferred to the West
End as The Plumber’s Progress (1975), starring Harry Secombe.
He then appeared with Gay Sweatshop in Martin Sherman’s
Passing By (1975), before spending a year with the co-operative
Joint Stock Company, appearing on tour in 1977 in Fanshen, A
Mad World My Masters and Epsom Downs. In 1978 he played the
title role in Titus Andronicus at the Bristol Old Vic and in
Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the
Half Moon Theatre.
In 1979 he joined the National Theatre. After playing Orlando
in As You Like It, he appeared in Sisterly Feelings (1980) and
Galileo. While still at the NT, he gave a one-man performance
of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets – a show that he
has subsequently toured internationally. In 1981 he played Verlaine
in Christopher Hampton’s Total Eclipse, Lord Are in Edward
Bond’s Restoration and Beefy in J P Donleavy’s The
Beastly Beatitudes of Balthasar B. In 1988, he played Faust
in both parts of Goethe’s play and appeared in and co-directed
Alan Bennett’s Single Spies at the National Theatre and
in the West End. In 2000, he played in The Mystery Of Charles
Dickens, which, after playing two seasons in the West End, he
took to Ireland, Australia, Chicago, and New York.
Other film roles include the Reverend Mr Beebe in A Room with
a View (1985), Mr Ducie in Maurice (1987), Gareth in Four Weddings
and a Funeral (1994), Mr Tilney in Shakespeare in Love (1998).
He also appeared in Mike Nichols’s Postcards From the
Edge and, fifteen years later, for the same director, the critically-acclaimed
HBO mini-series Angels in America. His most recent films are
The Phantom of the Opera and Bob the Butler. He directed the
film of The Ballad of the Sad Café, starring Vanessa
Redgrave, Keith Carradine and Rod Steiger. He has starred in
several one-man shows as well as appearing in batch of TV dramas
including, in the current series of Dr Who, as one of the characters
he has made very much is own on stage and page, the author Charles
Dickens.
He has directed many productions that include his own translations
of Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine (with Maggie Smith)
and Milan Kundera’s Jacques and his Master (1987), as
well as, in the West End and on Broadway, Willie Russell’s
Shirley Valentine (1988) and Jus’ Like That (2003); and
the operas Die Fledermaus (1988) for Scottish Opera, La Calisto
(1996,
Glimmerglass), The Consul (Holland Park), the musical Carmen
Jones (1991) and les Enfants du Paradis for the Royal Shakespeare
Company. He is also an author whose published work includes
many books on actors and acting as well as highly-acclaimed
biographies of Charles Laughton and Orson Welles and a memoir
called Love Is Where It Falls.
Publishing plans for Simon Callow in 2006 include the second
volume of his biography of Orson Welles, Hello Americans, and
the book based on his television series CLASSICAL DESTINATIONS.
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