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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, usually shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". It is widely considered one of the greatest plays of all time. Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto ; the Second Quarto ; and the First Folio. Each version includes lines and passages missing from the others.
Sir Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor. With a career spanning more than sixty years, he is noted for his roles on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is regarded as a British cultural icon and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Emmy Awards.
Richard Burton was a Welsh actor.
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor, theatre director and narrator. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor in theatre, film, television, and radio. He was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of Leonard Bast in the Merchant Ivory film adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel Howards End (1992), and was later nominated for the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of the title role in Rupert's Land (1998). In 2010, he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jeffrey Skilling in Lucy Prebble's Enron. He has appeared as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC about the Second World War.
Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor. Known for often playing eccentric roles on both stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Tony Award, making him the only Australian to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, in addition to three BAFTA Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. Rush is the founding president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and was named the 2012 Australian of the Year.
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor, film producer, and director. He graduated from RADA in 1985. A Shakespeare interpreter, Fiennes excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Widely regarded as one of Britain's most well-known and popular actors, he has received various accolades, including a BAFTA Award and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and an Emmy Award.
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly 50 years. His theatre work included notable performances in productions of the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw, and his film work included leading roles in several adapted literary classics.
Richard Burbage was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare.
George Richard Chamberlain is an American actor and singer who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare (1961–1966). He subsequently appeared in several miniseries, such as Shōgun (1980) and The Thorn Birds (1983) and was the first to play Jason Bourne in the 1988 television film The Bourne Identity. Chamberlain has also performed classical stage roles and worked in musical theatre.
Walter Stacy Keach Jr. is an American actor, active in theatre, film and television since the 1960s. Keach first distinguished himself in Off-Broadway productions and remained a prominent figure in American theatre across his career, particularly as a noted Shakespearean. He is the recipient of several theatrical accolades, four Drama Desk Awards, two Helen Hayes Awards and two Obie Awards for Distinguished Performance by an Actor. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Arthur Kopit's 1969 production of Indians.
Hallmark Hall of Fame, originally called Hallmark Television Playhouse, is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City–based greeting card company. It is the longest-running prime-time series in the history of television; it began airing in 1951 and aired on network television until 2014, with episodes largely limited to one film in a span of several months since the 1980s. Since 1954, all of its productions have been broadcast in color. It was one of the first video productions to telecast in color, a rarity in the 1950s. Many television films have been shown on the program since its debut, though the program began with live telecasts of dramas and then changed to videotaped productions before finally changing to filmed ones.
David John Tennant is a Scottish actor. He is best known for portraying the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in the sci-fi series Doctor Who. In 2023, he returned to the show as the fourteenth incarnation. His other notable screen roles include DI Alec Hardy in the crime drama series Broadchurch (2013–2017) and its 2014 remake, Kilgrave in the superhero series Jessica Jones (2015–2019), Crowley in the fantasy series Good Omens (2019–present) and various fictionalised versions of himself in the comedy series Staged (2020–2022).
Jonathan Stephen Geoffrey King, known professionally as Jonathan "Nash" Hyde, is an Australian actor. Hyde is perhaps best known for roles as Herbert Arthur Runcible Cadbury in the comedy film Richie Rich (1994), Samuel Parrish and Van Pelt in the fantasy adventure film Jumanji (1995), J. Bruce Ismay in the epic romantic film Titanic (1997), Culverton Smith in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Warren Westridge in creature feature film Anaconda (1997), Dr. Allen Chamberlain in the adventure horror film The Mummy (1999), and Eldritch Palmer in the FX TV series The Strain. Although an Australian citizen, he has mostly lived in the United Kingdom since 1969, after his family left Australia.
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE for services to performing arts and charity.
Alex Hyde-White is an English-American actor. In 1978, he signed with Universal Pictures as one of the last "contract players" in Hollywood, in a group that included Lindsay Wagner, Andrew Stevens, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gretchen Corbett and Sharon Gless.
Tobias Simpson Menzies is an English actor. He is known for playing Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the third and fourth seasons of the series The Crown, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and received Golden Globe and British Academy Television Award nominations. Menzies also played Frank and Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall in Starz's Outlander, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, in addition to his roles as Brutus in Rome and Edmure Tully in Game of Thrones.
Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet (1599–1601). He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius, and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At the beginning of the play, he is conflicted whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two acquaintances of his from childhood. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude.
Thomas William Hiddleston is an English actor. He gained international fame portraying Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), starting with Thor in 2011 and most recently headlining the Disney+ series Loki since 2021.
Darkest Hour is a 2017 British biographical war drama film about Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, in his early days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and the May 1940 war cabinet crisis, depicting his refusal to seek a peace treaty with Nazi Germany amid their advance into Western Europe. The film is directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. Along with Oldman, the cast includes Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill, Lily James as Elizabeth Layton, Stephen Dillane as Viscount Halifax, Ronald Pickup as Neville Chamberlain, and Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI. The title of the film refers to a phrase describing the early days of the war, which has been widely attributed to Churchill.
