Gordon Griffin

Last updated

Gordon Cuthbert Griffin MBE (born 19 December 1942) is an English actor, audiobook reader, casting director, dialogue coach, singer, composer and lyricist.

Contents

Early life

Griffin comes from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, though he was actually born at Gilsland in Northumberland, where his family temporarily located in wartime. He trained at Rose Bruford College. [1]

Career

As a stage actor, he has half a century's experience of working in theatres up and down the British Isles, and in English-speaking productions overseas. He took part in the first national tour of Godspell , and played in Julius Caesar and in Murder in the Cathedral at Chichester Festival Theatre. Other UK regional theatres where he has performed include Derby Playhouse and the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. [2]

For twenty years he has been Casting Director for The English Theatre of Hamburg and has cast over fifty plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest , Twelfth Night , As You Like It , Arms and the Man , Candida , Blithe Spirit , The Caretaker , Private Lives and The Circle, as well as the plays of LaBute and David Mamet. [3]

As a cabaret singer he has performed with his singing partner Francoise Geller in the UK and elsewhere. He has composed music and lyrics for productions such as The Circle, Educating Rita , When the Reaper Calls, Over the River, Through the Woods and April in Paris. [4]

His first film job, in Arabesque , required him to play a scene with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. [5]

On television he has been a presenter on Play School , he played Inky in two series of Chips' Comic for Channel 4 and he spoke the first line in the first episode of Byker Grove . [6]

Griffin has worked as a dialogue coach on Byker Grove and Kavanagh QC . [7]

Through doing radio drama he realised that he could display great versatility with his voice alone, accessing a greater range of parts than would otherwise be possible. (For instance, in the late 1960s when well into his twenties he took over the part of Billy the eldest grandson in The Dales, formerly Mrs Dale's Diary , who had previously been played as a boy with an unbroken voice, and played him till the serial ended.) [8]

He 'got in on the ground floor' when audiobooks started to be recorded. For many years he has been a voiceover specialist and has recorded nearly eight hundred audiobooks, mostly unabridged. [9] The subjects have been as varied as Homer's Odyssey , Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and novels by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, as well as more modern writers like Hilary Mantel and Melvyn Bragg. Also many titles in the Golden Age of Murder series for the British Library, and non-fiction titles such as Elegy: The First Day on the Somme, and Breakfast is a Dangerous Meal by Terence Kealey, among many others. AudioFile Magazine wrote: "Griffin is not just a narrator, but an artist of the Spoken Word. He is in the top five of the most borrowed audiobook narrators in the world." [10] In 2015-2016 his 2015 reading of Kate Ellis 's The Death Season was the sixth most borrowed adult audiobook from UK public libraries, as reported by the Public Lending Right office. [11]

His more unusual audio recordings include having been the courteous voice advising alighting passengers to "Mind the gap, please" on the London Underground. [12]

In 2017, Griffin was appointed MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List "For services to People with Sight Impairment". [13]

Publication

In 2020, Griffin published his memoir Speaking Volumes. [14]

Selected Screen Credits

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Dale</span> British actor, singer, songwriter (born 1935)

Jim Dale is an English actor, composer, director, narrator, singer and songwriter. In the United Kingdom he is known as a pop singer of the 1950s who became a leading actor at the National Theatre. In British film, he is now the last surviving actor to appear in multiple Carry On films.

<i>Byker Grove</i> British childrens television series (1989–2006)

Byker Grove is a British teen drama and coming of age television series which aired between 1989 and 2006 as part of CBBC on BBC One.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stacy Keach</span> American actor (born 1941)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy Northam</span> British actor (born 1961)

Jeremy Philip Northam is an English actor.

Martin Jarvis OBE is an English actor. Described by the BBC as "one of Britain's most distinguished and versatile actors", he has had a varied career in theatre, film and television, and is particularly noted for radio acting and voicing audiobooks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Dotrice</span> British actor (1923–2017)

Roy Dotrice was a British actor. He played the antiquarian John Aubrey in the solo play Brief Lives. He won a Tony Award for his performance in the 2000 Broadway revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, also appearing as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father Leopold in Amadeus (1984), Charles Dickens in Dickens of London (1984), and Jacob Wells/Father in Beauty and the Beast.

Geoffrey Beevers is a British actor who has appeared in many stage and screen roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Robinson (producer)</span> British-Cambodian producer and director

Matthew Robinson is a British-Cambodian television and film executive producer, producer, director and writer. After graduating from Cambridge University. he directed many episodes of popular British television dramas and soap operas in the 1970s and 1980s. He became the first producer of the series Byker Grove (1989–1997), and was also made the executive producer of EastEnders (1998–2000).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Coulson</span> English actor

Christian Peter Coulson is an English actor known for playing young Tom Marvolo Riddle in the 2002 fantasy film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass communication research, which tends to approach the topic from a social sciences perspective. Defining the field is problematic; some institutions and syllabuses do not distinguish it from media studies or classify it as a subfield of popular culture studies.

Andrew Hayden-Smith is an English actor and voiceover artist and former television presenter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Johnson (playwright)</span> British playwright

Catherine Johnson is a British playwright, producing works for stage and television. She is best known for her book for the ABBA-inspired musical Mamma Mia! and screenplay for the musical's film adaptation. The film became the highest-grossing British picture of all time in the UK, and the biggest selling UK DVD of all time in January 2009. She also co-wrote the 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

Tommy Murphy is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, adaptor and director. He created and was head writer for the 2022 TV series Significant Others. He is best known for his stage and screen adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's memoir Holding the Man. His most recent plays are a stage adaptation of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach, Mark Colvin's Kidney and Packer & Sons.

Wally K. Daly was an English writer for television and radio and one-time chairman of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. He was born in Grangetown, Middlesbrough.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allan Corduner</span> British actor

Allan Corduner is a British actor. Born in Stockholm to a German mother and a Russo-Finnish father, Corduner grew up in a secular Jewish home in London. After earning a BA (Hons) in English and Drama at Bristol University he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has worked extensively on stage, TV, and film, both in the UK and in the United States. His voice is familiar from many BBC radio plays, audio books and TV documentaries.

Andre Vincent is a comedian, writer, actor and comedy historian. A situational comic, Vincent is known for his observations about health matters, including his experiences with diabetes, cancer and kidney surgery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justin Chadwick</span> English actor and director

Justin Chadwick is an English actor and television and film director. He directed episodes of EastEnders, Byker Grove, The Bill, Spooks and Red Cap before directing nine of the fifteen episodes of the mini-series Bleak House, which was broadcast by the BBC in the UK and by PBS in the United States as part of its Masterpiece Theatre series.

Harry Meacher is a British actor, director and playwright.

David Edward Rose was a British television producer and commissioning editor.

Kobna Kuttah Holdbrook-Smith is a Ghanaian-British actor. He has played roles in films, including Father Richard Emery in Ghost Stories (2017), Oliver in The Commuter, Templeton Frye in Mary Poppins Returns and Doctor Wren in Gwen. He has portrayed Crispus Allen in the superhero film Justice League (2017), part of the DC Extended Universe.

References

  1. ↑ The Spotlight, London WC2, successive editions
  2. ↑ The Stage Yearbook pub Carson & Comerford, London, successive years
  3. ↑ Theatrical Art and Entertainment Industry Contacts, Stage Section, pub.by Spotlight Publications, London, successive editions
  4. ↑ Theatre World Annual ed by Frances Stephens, pub. Rockliff, London, successive years
  5. ↑ The British Film Catalogue 1895-1985, Ed.Denis Gifford, Volume One, Third Edition, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000. ISBN   0-7153-8835-5
  6. ↑ Encyclopaedia of Television Ed. Horace Newcomb, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, First Edition 1997 ISBN   1884964265
  7. ↑ Encyclopaedia of Television Ed. Horace Newcomb, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Second Edition 2004 ISBN   978-1884964268
  8. ↑ Programmes Archive, BBC Caversham
  9. ↑ "Over 700 titles and counting!". Gordon Griffin. Retrieved 18 July 2017.Full listing of titles, 772 as of July 2017
  10. ↑ AudioFile Magazine, Silver St, Portland ME
  11. ↑ "Most borrowed titles: June 2015-June 2016: Audio Titles (Adult)" (PDF). PLR Office. p. 5. Retrieved 6 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Lyall, Ellie (16 June 2017). "Actor from Whitley Bay to receive MBE". The News Guardian. Retrieved 6 July 2017.
  13. ↑ "No. 61962". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 16 June 2017. p. B18.
  14. ↑ Griffin, Gordon (2020). Speaking Volumes. Austin Macauley Ltd. ISBN   978-1528989206.
  15. ↑ TV credits in successive volumes of Radio Times and TV Times, Westminster Arts Library, 35 St Martins Street, London WC2
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.