Roger Williams (born 1974) is a Welsh playwright [1] and screenwriter working in both English and Welsh. His work often examines aspects of modern Welsh life, such as the place of minority languages, the plight of declining industrial communities and the Cardiff gay scene. [2]
He was born at Newport, Wales, and brought up in Carmarthen. He graduated in 1995 from the University of Warwick with a degree in English and American Literature.
His theatre work includes:
In 2002, his work Tales from the Pleasure Beach , screened on BBC Two, was nominated for a BAFTA Award in the Best Drama Series category. He has also written episodes of Hollyoaks (Channel 4), The Story of Tracy Beaker (BBC), The Bench (BBC Wales), Citizens! (BBC Wales) and many episodes of the daily Welsh-language soap opera Pobol y Cwm which is broadcast on S4C. In 2006, he became the lead writer of S4C's popular new drama series Caerdydd, [3] for which he won a Bafta in 2011. [4]
In 2012 he established the production company Joio. The company's first production was the film Tir for S4C. The film was adapted from Roger Williams's original theatre play Tir Sir Gâr for which he won the Best Welsh language Playwright award at the Wales Theatre Critics Awards 2014. [5]
Williams created and wrote the bilingual English/Welsh crime drama television series Bang (TV series), first broadcast on S4C in 2017. Bang won the Celtic Media Festival award for Best Drama series and a New York Film and TV Festivals medal of excellence. [6]
Rhys Ifans is a Welsh actor and musician. He was the frontman of Welsh rock music bands The Peth and Super Furry Animals. As an actor, he is best known for his roles in Notting Hill (1999), Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000), and Enduring Love (2004) as well as his portrayals of Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010), the supervillain Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and Grigori Rasputin in The King's Man (2021). Other roles include Hector DeJean in the Epix thriller series Berlin Station, Mycroft Holmes in the CBS series Elementary, and Ser Otto Hightower in the HBO series House of the Dragon.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 2005 to Wales and its people.
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Richard James is a guitarist, bassist and singer-songwriter originally from Carmarthen, Wales. He was a founding member of the band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, who split up in 2006. He performs and records as a solo artist, and as part of the bands Pen Pastwn and Locus.
Kevin Edward Allen is a British actor, director, producer and writer. Allen came to prominence with the 1991 BBC film On the March with Bobby's Army, and for writing and directing his debut feature film, Twin Town, in 1997. He directed and co-wrote the movie adaptation of Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", submitted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Oscars ceremony but not nominated, the Hollywood feature films, The Big Tease and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, and the first series of ITV's Benidorm, along with numerous other films and documentaries.
John Hardy is an English-born composer who has been commissioned by the Arts Council/National Lottery, the BBC, Welsh National Opera and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, among others. His work includes opera, choral and orchestral pieces, site-specific theatre events and film.
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Richard Harrington is a Welsh actor.
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Mali Rhys Harries is a Welsh television actress and presenter who has been in the television industry since 1989. She has appeared in several well-established TV series in Welsh and English, including Hinterland, The Indian Doctor and Pobol y Cwm.
Paul Griffiths is a Welsh writer, theatre critic and director. He won the Drama Medal at the National Urdd Gobaith Cymru Eisteddfod three times in succession between 1995 and 1997 – the only person ever to do this. Between March 2006 and December 2013 he contributed a controversial weekly theatre column to the National Paper of Wales Y Cymro. He is also a regular contributor on the Welsh language Television Channel S4C and BBC Radio Cymru.
Iwan Rheon is a Welsh actor, singer, and musician. He is best known for his roles as Simon Bellamy in the E4 series Misfits, Ramsay Bolton in the HBO series Game of Thrones, and Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars in the film The Dirt. He has also appeared in the series Vicious, Riviera, and Inhumans.
Sharon Morgan is a Welsh actress of stage and screen, currently based in Cardiff. She was brought up in the village of Llandyfaelog. She is best known for her work within the Welsh film and television industries and has been the recipient of three BAFTA Cymru awards.
Thomas Cullen is a Welsh actor and director. He had roles in the independent film Weekend (2011), as Anthony Foyle, Viscount Gillingham in the television series Downton Abbey, and as Sir Landry in the historical drama series Knightfall. He also appeared in another historical drama playing the role of Thomas Seymour in Becoming Elizabeth.
John Hefin MBE was a Welsh television producer and director who served as head of drama at BBC Wales. He began working for the BBC in 1960, and his career at the corporation included devising the long-running Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm, co-writing and directing the comedy film Grand Slam, and producing the 1981 biopic The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. He was later involved with the work of Film Cymru, the Film Commission Wales, and the media journal Cyfrwng. He also worked in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University. He died from cancer in November 2012.
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David Lyn Jenkins, known professionally as David Lyn, was a Welsh television, film and stage actor and director who in his 40 year career was at the forefront in the development of professional Welsh language theatre in Wales in the 1960s and 70s and won a BAFTA Cymru award.
John Berwyn Rowlands is a Welsh creative producer who founded and continues to lead the Iris Prize LGBT+ Film Festival. Previously he was chief executive of Sgrîn, Media Agency of Wales from 1997 to 2006 and director of the Welsh International Film Festival from 1989 to 1997.
Typical of this was Gulp by a young Cardiff writer, Roger Williams: It was generally considered to be Cardiff's first professionally produced young, out gay play, referred to by the press as a 'cultural milestone'. ...