Firdous Bamji | |
---|---|
Born | Firdous Esadvaster Bamji Bombay, India |
Education | St. Christopher's School, Bahrain, Kodaikanal International School, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, University of South Carolina |
Occupation(s) | Actor, writer |
Spouse | Erin Thigpen (m. 1990;div. 1995) |
Partner(s) | Hayley Mills (1997–present) |
Firdous Bamji was born in Bombay, India, to a Zoroastrian Parsi family that was residing in Bahrain. [1] [2] His father, Esadvaster, was the regional representative for Norwich Union Life Insurance Society. His mother, Roshan, was a homemaker, and both his parents were active in various civic organizations. [3] [4] [5]
Bamji attended St. Christopher's School, Bahrain, a British private school, until the age of ten. In 1977, he and his two brothers were sent to Kodaikanal International School, an American boarding school in the mountains of South India. [2]
He later attended the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and the University of South Carolina, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism and a Master of Fine Arts.[ citation needed ]
During his last years in undergraduate school Bamji began acting at Columbia's first professional theatre, Trustus, where the iconoclastic artistic director, Jim Thigpen [6] [7] took him under his wing. At Trustus he played a variety of roles, including Pale in Burn This, Torch in Beirut, Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Peter Patrone in The Heidi Chronicles and all the parts in Eric Bogosian's solo play, Drinking in America. [8]
After studying for an MFA in Theatre at USC, Bamji moved to Washington, D.C., to finish his degree as an apprentice at The Shakespeare Theatre. In 1994 he was cast in Eric Bogosian's SubUrbia at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater, and he and his then wife, Erin Thigpen, sold the car and moved to New York City. [9] [10]
Bamji has appeared on stages in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and major regional theaters around the United States. [11] He has played leading roles in world and American premieres of plays by playwrights such as Tom Stoppard, [12] [13] Tony Kushner, [14] [15] Naomi Wallace, Rebecca Gilman and Eric Bogosian. [9]
In 2007, he was invited by director Simon McBurney to co-write and perform in a new play with the British company Complicité. The piece was to revolve around the relationship between two pure mathematicians who lived at the turn of the 20th century, the self-taught genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Cambridge University don, G. H. Hardy. Bamji had been interested in this story for a few years and was working on a film script when he was approached by McBurney. [16] [17] The result was A Disappearing Number , [18] [19] which won the Laurence Olivier Award and the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play and the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. [20] Over the next four years, A Disappearing Number toured Europe, Australia, India and the United States [21] and finished its universally acclaimed run at the Novello Theatre in London's West End. [22]
Bamji's television credits include Law & Order and Law & Order SVU and his film credits include The Sixth Sense , [23] Unbreakable , Analyze That , Ashes, Justice and The War Within , for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. [24] [25] [26] [27] In 2015 he received an Obie Award for his performance in Roundabout Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink . [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] He has narrated more than twenty audio books, including The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, [35] Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Camille by Alexandre Dumas, [36] The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, [37] [38] [39] Six Graves to Munich by Mario Puzo, and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, for which he received an Audie Award nomination. [40] [41]
Bamji lives in London with his partner, British actress Hayley Mills, whom he met when they toured America playing the lead roles of The King and I in 1997. [42]
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Cherlynne Theresa Thigpen was an American actress of stage and screen. She was known for her role as "The Chief" of ACME Crimenet in the game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and various spinoffs, and for her role as "Luna" in the Playhouse Disney children's series Bear in the Big Blue House. For her varied television work, Thigpen was nominated for six Daytime Emmy Awards. She won a Tony Award in 1997 for portraying Dr. Judith Kaufman in An American Daughter, and also played Ella Farmer on The District (2000–2003). Thigpen first gained attention for her role in the 1971 off-Broadway musical Godspell. Thigpen's character is named Lynne, and she sang "O Bless the Lord, My Soul" in the musical. Thigpen reprised her role as Lynne in the 1973 film adaptation, which she starred in alongside David Haskell and Victor Garber.
Eric Michael Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His play Talk Radio, was a finalist for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Bogosian also wrote and starred in the 1988 film adaptation, for which he won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by The Village Voice newspaper to theater artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after the 2014 ceremony, the American Theatre Wing became the joint presenter and administrative manager of the Obie Awards. The Obie Awards are considered off-Broadway's highest honor, similar to the Tony Awards for Broadway productions.
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SubUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburbian New Jersey hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate, Pony, who has become a successful musician. Pony's return strips away illusions and excuses to reveal the meaningless dead-end existences of everyone.
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Indian Ink is a 1995 play by Tom Stoppard based on his 1991 radio play In the Native State.
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A Disappearing Number is a 2007 play co-written and devised by the Théâtre de Complicité company and directed and conceived by English playwright Simon McBurney. It was inspired by the collaboration during the 1910s between the pure mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan from India, and the Cambridge University don G.H. Hardy.
Robert Falls is an American theater director and the former artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
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