Sir Patrick Stewart is an English actor. With a career spanning over seven decades of stage and screen, he has received various accolades, including two Laurence Olivier Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, four Emmy Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama in 2010.
Sir David Courtney Suchet is an English actor. He is known for his work on stage and in television. He portrayed Edward Teller in the television serial Oppenheimer (1980) and received the RTS and BPG awards for his performance as Augustus Melmotte in the British serial The Way We Live Now (2001). International acclaim and recognition followed his performance as Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), for which he received a 1991 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nomination.
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and on tour across the UK and internationally.
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn is an English theatre director. He has been the artistic director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal Haymarket. He has directed dramas for the stage, including Macbeth, as well as opera and musicals, such as Cats (1981) and Les Misérables (1985).
Fiona Shaw is an Irish film and theatre actress. She did extensive work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, as well as in film and television. In 2020, she was listed at No. 29 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors. She was made an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.
Samantha Jane Bond is an English actress. She played Miss Moneypenny in four James Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era, and appeared in Downton Abbey as the wealthy widow Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister of Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham. On television, she played "Auntie Angela" in the sitcom Outnumbered and the villain Mrs Wormwood in the CBBC Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures. She also originated the role of "Miz Liz" Probert in the Rumpole of the Bailey series. She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director. He won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. He also received Obie Awards for his role in The End of the Day and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. Rees was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in November 2015.
James Edward Fleet is an English actor of theatre, radio and screen. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral and the dim-witted but kind-hearted Hugo Horton in the BBC sitcom television series The Vicar of Dibley. Since 2020, he has played King George III in the Netflix Bridgerton.
Aikaterini Hadjipateras, known professionally as Kathryn Hunter, is a British–American actress and theatre director, known for her appearances as Arabella Figg in the Harry Potter film series, Eedy Karn in the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff series Andor, as the Three Witches in Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, and most recently as Swiney in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things. Hunter was born in New York to Greek parents, and was raised in England. She trained at RADA, where she is now an associate and regularly directs student productions, and studied clowning with Philippe Gaulier.
Ruth Katrin Gemmell is an English actress. She starred in the film Fever Pitch in 1997 which was followed by supporting roles in television series EastEnders, Casualty, Home Fires and Penny Dreadful. She has played Carly Beaker, the mother of the title character in the Tracy Beaker franchise since 2004. In 2020, she began playing Violet, Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton in the Netflix series Bridgerton.
Rupert Goold is an English director who works primarily in theatre. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013). Since 2010, Goold has been an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 for services to drama.
Stuart McQuarrie is a Scottish actor who has performed extensively in theatre. In television he has appeared in Taggart (1990), Rab C. Nesbitt (1992), London's Burning (1994), Bugs (1997), Earth (1998), Silent Witness (2010), The Hollow Crown (2016), Foundation (2021), Shetland (2022), The Rig (2023). In film he has played Sergeant Farrell in 28 Days Later (2002), he was david Saddler in Blood (2012), Mr. Turner (2014), Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), The Nest (2020), White Bird (2024).
Richard Dillane is an English actor. He appears in Soldier Soldier (1995), Cold Feet (2000), Space Race (2005), Tristan & Isolde (2006), Spooks (2007), Casualty (2008-2009), Oranges and Sunshine (2010), Doctor Who (2011), Argo (2012), Dead in Tombstone (2013), Wolf Hall (2015), Peaky Blinders and Poldark (2016), Giri/Haji (2019), Young Wallander (2020),The Crown and Andor (2022).
Richard McCabe is a Scottish actor who has specialised in classical theatre. He is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is a 1973 play by English playwright Edward Bond. It depicts an ageing William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the local peasant farmers. Although the play is fictional, this contract has a factual basis. Bingo is a political drama heavily influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic theatre. Some have praised Bond's portrayal of Shakespeare while others have criticized it.
Sir Gregory Doran is an English director known for his Shakespearean work. The Sunday Times called him 'one of the great Shakespearians of his generation'.
Simon Godwin is artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. He was previously associate director of London's National Theatre, associate director of the Royal Court Theatre, and associate director at Bristol Old Vic.
Claire Benedict is a British actress known for her work in classical productions on the British stage, but best known for portraying the principal character Mma Ramotswe in the continuing radio adaptations of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. She won a Time Out Award for Best Performance for her portrayal of Sophia Adams in Errol John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, directed by Maya Angelou. She lives in Todmorden in the Pennines.
Elizabeth Ranken is a British choreographer, performer, director, movement director and artist. She is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and was a lead performer with DV8 Physical Theatre. Her work encompasses opera, theatre, physical theatre, dance, television, film and art.
Nav Sidhu is a British television, theatre, and film actor. His longest-running television role was as Azim Desai in the Channel 4/E4 soap opera Hollyoaks.
