Simon Russell Beale

Born: 1961-01-12

Sir Simon Russell Beale CBE (born January 12, 1961) is an English actor. He is known for his appearances in film, television and theatre, and work on radio, on audiobooks and as a narrator. For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2019. He has spent much of his theatre career working in productions for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He has received ten Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning three awards for his performances in Volpone (1996), Candide (2000), and Uncle Vanya (2003). For his work on the Broadway stage he has received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination for his performance as George in the Tom Stoppard play Jumpers in 2004. For his role as Henry Lehman in The Lehman Trilogy, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and was nominated for an Olivier Award. Beale has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation". Beale made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama Orlando (1992). He continued acting in films such as Persuasion (1995), Hamlet (1996), My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Into the Woods (2014), and Mary Queen of Scots (2018). In 2017, he starred in Armando Iannucci's dark comedy The Death of Stalin playing Lavrentiy Beria for which he received the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has also appeared in the television projects The Young Visiters (2003), Dunkirk (2004), and as Falstaff in the BBC made-for-television films Henry IV, Part I and Part II (2012). He was part of the main cast of Showtime's Penny Dreadful.


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as Dionysus
Released: 2022-07-06

After his retirement is interrupted by Gorr the God Butcher, a galactic killer who seeks the...

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The Outfit

as Roy Boyle
Released: 2022-02-25

Leonard is an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. After...

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Operation Finale

as David Ben-Gurion
Released: 2018-08-29

In 1960, a team of Israeli secret agents is deployed to find Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi...

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The Legend of Tarzan

as Mr. Frum
Released: 2016-06-29

Tarzan, having acclimated to life in London, is called back to his former home in the jungle to...

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Museo

as Frank Graves
Released: 2018-08-23

Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist...

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Orlando

as Earl of Moray
Released: 1992-12-11

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that...

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Mary Queen of Scots

as Robert Beale
Released: 2018-12-07

In 1561, Mary Stuart, widow of the King of France, returns to Scotland, reclaims her rightful...

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Radioactive

as Professor Lippmann
Released: 2020-03-11

The story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through...

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Benediction

as Robbie Ross
Released: 2021-12-23

Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated...

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Into the Woods

as Baker's Father
Released: 2014-12-24

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the...

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as Winston Churchill
Released: 2022-04-01

In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to...

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See!

Hamlet

as Second Gravedigger
Released: 1996-12-25

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying...

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The Death of Stalin

as Lavrenti Beria
Released: 2017-10-20

When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle...

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Deep Water

as Donald Crowhurst (voice)
Released: 2006-12-15

DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur...

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The Gathering

as Luke Fraser
Released: 2003-02-23

Cassie Grant (Christina Ricci) is a young girl from the United States who is wandering through...

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Firebrand

as Stephen Gardiner
Released: 2024-03-27

In blood-soaked Tudor England, Katherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of King Henry VIII, is...

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Alice in Wonderland

as King Cedric of Hearts
Released: 1999-02-28

Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets...

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My Week with Marilyn

as Cotes-Preedy
Released: 2011-11-23

London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of...

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My Cousin Rachel

as Couch
Released: 2017-06-08

A young Englishman plots revenge against his mysterious, beautiful cousin, believing that she...

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Persuasion

as Charles Musgrove
Released: 1995-05-01

Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, is persuaded to break...

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An Ideal Husband

as Sir Edward
Released: 1999-04-15

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All...

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Blackadder: Back & Forth

as Wellington
Released: 1999-03-29

What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly...

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The Deep Blue Sea

as Sir William Collyer
Released: 2011-09-11

The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force...

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Muse of Fire

as Self
Released: 2013-09-26

Funny, passionate, exciting, and smart: ‘Muse Of Fire’ will change the way you feel about...

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Home! Home!

as Self (narrator)
Released: 2024-03-01

A lyric documentary about home, time, memory and mortality, written by Terence Davies and...

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Legacy

as Hookey
Released: 2013-11-28

A KGB plot to attack the UK has plunged Britain into a state of emergency. Charles, a young MI6...

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National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage

as Hamlet
Released: 2013-11-02

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National...

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The Young Visiters

as Prince of Wales
Released: 2003-12-26

The Young Visiters, written in twelve days by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890, is a surreal...

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A Christmas Carol

as Scrooge's voice (voice)
Released: 2020-12-04

The radical new take on Dickens’ classic seeks both to exhume the original story’s gritty...

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Shakespeare Live! From the RSC

as Richard II
Released: 2016-04-23

From the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and guests mark...

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National Theatre Live: London Assurance

as Sir Harcourt Courtly
Released: 2010-06-24

Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a...

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National Theatre Live: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

as Richard II
Released: 2019-01-15

Simon Russell Beale plays William Shakespeare’s Richard II, broadcast live from the stage of the...

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House)

as The Duchess / Introduced by
Released: 2011-04-23

A full-length ballet created by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for the Royal Ballet at the...

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National Theatre Live: King Lear

as Lear, King of Britain
Released: 2014-05-01

An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of...

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The Hour

as Himself
Released: 2020-08-19

The hour before actors go on stage at the National Theatre in London is a performance in and of...

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Cunk on Shakespeare

as Self - Actor
Released: 2016-05-11

Fresh from her triumphs on Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe investigating time, Winston Churchill,...

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National Theatre Live: The Lehman Trilogy

as Henry Lehman
Released: 2019-07-25

On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside....

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Shakespeare's Sonnets

as uncredited
Released: 2012-07-18

Released alongside a spectacular edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the Apple iPad, this...

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BBC Proms: Sondheim's 80th Birthday

as Himself - Performer
Released: 2010-04-19

Marking the 80th birthday of one of Broadway's great innovators, the first ever all-Sondheim...

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Lava Land - Glowing Hawaii

as Narrator
Released: 2013-11-25

Hawaii, with its tropical rainforests and diverse coral reef is a spectacular natural paradise...

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National Theatre Live: Collaborators

as Joseph Stalin
Released: 2011-12-01

John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the...

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RSC Live: The Tempest

as Prospero
Released: 2017-01-11

On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left...

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National Theatre Live: Timon of Athens

as Timon
Released: 2012-11-01

Based on Shakespeare’s play, Timon of Athens tells the tale of conspicuous consumption, debt and...

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A Christmas History

as Presenter
Released: 2010-12-24

Simon Russell Beale takes a journey through Italy, Britain, Germany and Austria as he explores...

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Monteverdi in Mantua - The Genius of the Vespers

as presenter
Released: 2015-03-27

Monteverdi in Mantua tells the story of the Duke of Mantua and his court composer Claudio...

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An Easter Celebration

as presenter
Released: 2008-03-23

Simon Russell Beale presents a special concert for Easter from LSO St Luke's in London,...

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Penny Dreadful

as Ferdinand Lyle
First aired: 2014-05-11

Some of literature's most terrifying characters, including Dr. Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and...

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Mary & George

as Sir George Villiers
First aired: 2024-03-05

In 17th century England, Mary Villiers molds her beautiful son, George, to seduce King James I,...

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The Hollow Crown

as Falstaff
First aired: 2012-06-30

A series of British television films featuring William Shakespeare's History Plays.

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Spooks

as Home Secretary
First aired: 2002-05-13

Tense drama series about the different challenges faced by the British Security Service as they...

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Spooks

as William Towers
First aired: 2002-05-13

Tense drama series about the different challenges faced by the British Security Service as they...

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American Experience

as John Adams (voice)
First aired: 1988-10-04

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform...

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Blackadder

as Napoléon
First aired: 1983-06-15

Black Adder traces the deeply cynical and self-serving lineage of various Edmund Blackadders...

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A Dance to the Music of Time

as Widmerpool
First aired: 1997-10-09

A Dance to the Music of Time is a four-part adaptation of Anthony Powell's 12-volume novel...

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A Very Peculiar Practice

as Mark Stibbs
First aired: 1986-05-21

A young and idealistic Doctor Stephen Daker arrives at Lowlands University to work at the Health...

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Vanity Fair

as John Sedley
First aired: 2018-09-02

In a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having, no one is more determined to...

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Dunkirk

as Winston Churchill
First aired: 2004-02-18

Major factual drama telling the story of history's greatest maritime evacuation, after the World...

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Symphony

as uncredited
First aired: 2011-11-03

Simon Russell Beale presents a radical reappraisal of the place of the symphony in the modern...

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Simon Schama's Shakespeare

as uncredited
First aired: 2012-06-22

Simon Schama explores the life and times of William Shakespeare to shed a new and fascinating...

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