Alex Jennings
Encyclopedia
Alex Jennings is an English actor
whose roles have included Charles, Prince of Wales in The Queen
(2006).
. He attended Abbs Cross Technical High School in Hornchurch
and then studied English and Theatre studies at the University of Warwick
, graduating in 1978. He trained as an actor for two years at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
.
. For his performance as Gloumov in Too Clever by Half at the Old Vic
, he won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1988. He was nominated in the same category the following year for portraying Dorante in The Liar
. He has performed for the Royal National Theatre
in a number of plays, including Leontes in The Winter's Tale
and the title role in Albert Speer
.
His Royal Shakespeare Company
roles include the title role in Peer Gynt
(for which he won an Olivier Award 1995/6 for Best Actor), the title role in Richard II
(opposite Anton Lesser
as Henry Bolingbroke), Theseus/Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream
(UK, American tour and Broadway), Angelo in Measure for Measure
, and the title role in Hamlet
.
In 2002 he appeared in the Cameron Mackintosh
/Trevor Nunn
revival of My Fair Lady
at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
and won an Olivier Award as Best Actor in a Musical.
His film appearances include The Queen, War Requiem, the RSC's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lord Mark in the Oscar-nominated movie The Wings of the Dove, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
, and The Four Feathers
. His television appearances includeThe State Within
, Smiley's People, The Franchise Affair
, Inspector Morse
, Alfonso Bonzo
, the title role in Ashenden, Dead Poets Society
, Inspector Alleyn
, Hard Times
, Bad Blood, and Peter Ackroyd
's London. His many radio credits include Casino Royale
, The Way of the World
, Strange Meeting, Vorbis in Small Gods
, and The Old Curiosity Shop. He has also recorded the audio versions of the books The Horse and His Boy
, Out of the Silent Planet
, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne
, Perelandra
by C. S. Lewis
and Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly
which was selected in June 2008 as one of the top forty audiobooks of all time.
In 2007 he played Gary in Present Laughter
at the NT
, and the Rev Hutton in the BBC series Cranford
.
He also played John Le Mesurier
in the one-off BBC drama Hancock and Joan
.
In June 2008 he made his operatic debut at the ENO in Robert Carsen's production of Bernstein's Candide, in which he played Voltaire and Doctor Pangloss. In 2009 he appeared in The Habit of Art
as Benjamin Britten
.
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
whose roles have included Charles, Prince of Wales in The Queen
The Queen (film)
The Queen is a 2006 British drama film directed by Stephen Frears, written by Peter Morgan, and starring Helen Mirren as the title role, HM Queen Elizabeth II...
(2006).
Early years
Jennings was born to Michael Thomas and Peggy Patricia Mahoney in EssexEssex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
. He attended Abbs Cross Technical High School in Hornchurch
Hornchurch
Hornchurch is a large suburban town in England, and part of the London Borough of Havering. Hornchurch is in North-East London .It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan. It comprises a number of shopping...
and then studied English and Theatre studies at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
, graduating in 1978. He trained as an actor for two years at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, opened by Laurence Olivier in 1946, is an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, an organisation securing the highest standards of training in the performing arts, and is an associate school of the Faculty of Creative Arts of the University of the...
.
Career
Jennings began his career in regional repertory theatre, playing a range of roles including Robespierre in The Scarlet PimpernelThe Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
. For his performance as Gloumov in Too Clever by Half at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
, he won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1988. He was nominated in the same category the following year for portraying Dorante in The Liar
Le Menteur
The Liar is a farcical play by Pierre Corneille that was first performed in 1644. It was based on La Verdad Sospechosa by the Spanish-American playwright Juan Ruíz de Alarcón, which was published in 1634.- Summary :...
. He has performed for the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in a number of plays, including Leontes in The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...
and the title role in Albert Speer
Albert Speer (play)
Albert Speer was a 2000 play by the British playwright David Edgar on the life of the Nazi-era architect Albert Speer, based on based on the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny. It premiered that year at the Lyttelton auditorium of the Royal National Theatre, with the title...
.
His Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
roles include the title role in Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
(for which he won an Olivier Award 1995/6 for Best Actor), the title role in Richard II
Richard II (play)
King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
(opposite Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser is a British actor. He attended Moseley Grammar School and the University of Liverpool before going to RADA in 1977 where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor of his year....
as Henry Bolingbroke), Theseus/Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
(UK, American tour and Broadway), Angelo in Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...
, and the title role in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
.
In 2002 he appeared in the Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York...
/Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
revival of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
and won an Olivier Award as Best Actor in a Musical.
His film appearances include The Queen, War Requiem, the RSC's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lord Mark in the Oscar-nominated movie The Wings of the Dove, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story is based on the "coat of many colors" story of Joseph from the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly...
, and The Four Feathers
The Four Feathers (2002 film)
The Four Feathers is a 2002 action drama film directed by Shekhar Kapur, starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, Djimon Hounsou and Kate Hudson...
. His television appearances includeThe State Within
The State Within
The State Within is a 2006 Seven-episode British television political drama, written by Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival, produced by Grainne Marmion as a joint BBC–BBC America production, that was broadcast by BBC1 in the United Kingdom from Thursday, 2 November 2006.The protagonist of The State...
, Smiley's People, The Franchise Affair
The Franchise Affair
The Franchise Affair is a 1948 mystery novel by Josephine Tey, in which a small-town lawyer is called on to defend two women accused of kidnapping and mistreating a girl named Betty Kane....
, Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (TV series)
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes....
, Alfonso Bonzo
Alfonso Bonzo
Alfonso Bonzo is a 1986 children's book by Andrew Davies and a 1990 children's television mini-series adapted from the book by the author. The series starred Alex Jennings as Alfonso Bonzo and Scott Riley as Billy Webb....
, the title role in Ashenden, Dead Poets Society
Dead Poets Society
Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Robin Williams. Set at the conservative and aristocratic Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry.The script was written...
, Inspector Alleyn
Roderick Alleyn
Roderick Alleyn is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published as late as...
, Hard Times
Hard Times
Hard Times - For These Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times....
, Bad Blood, and Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...
's London. His many radio credits include Casino Royale
Casino Royale (novel)
Casino Royale is Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. It paved the way for a further eleven novels by Fleming himself, in addition to two short story collections, followed by many "continuation" Bond novels by other authors....
, The Way of the World
The Way of the World
The Way of the World is a play written by British playwright William Congreve. It premiered in 1700 in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London...
, Strange Meeting, Vorbis in Small Gods
Small Gods
Small Gods is the thirteenth of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, published in 1992. It tells the origin of the god Om, and his relations with his prophet, the reformer Brutha...
, and The Old Curiosity Shop. He has also recorded the audio versions of the books The Horse and His Boy
The Horse and His Boy
The Horse and His Boy is a novel by C. S. Lewis. It was published in 1954, making it the fifth of seven books published in Lewis' series The Chronicles of Narnia. The books in this series are sometimes ordered chronologically in relation to the events in the books as opposed to the dates of their...
, Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The...
, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, Perelandra
Perelandra
Perelandra is the second book in the Space Trilogy of C. S. Lewis, set in the Field of Arbol...
by C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
and Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly
Charlie Connelly
Charlie Connelly is an author and broadcaster. Connelly began his career as a writer of books relating to sporting events, most commonly football. His breakthrough 2002 book, Stamping Grounds, was his fifth, and followed the Liechtenstein national football team in their unsuccessful campaign to...
which was selected in June 2008 as one of the top forty audiobooks of all time.
In 2007 he played Gary in Present Laughter
Present Laughter
Present Laughter is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1939 and first staged in 1942 on tour, alternating with his lower middle-class domestic drama This Happy Breed...
at the NT
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, and the Rev Hutton in the BBC series Cranford
Cranford (TV series)
Cranford is a British television series directed by Simon Curtis and Steve Hudson. The teleplay by Heidi Thomas was adapted from three novellas by Elizabeth Gaskell published between 1849 and 1858: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow, and Mr Harrison's Confessions...
.
He also played John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is most famous for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the popular 1970s BBC comedy Dad's Army.-Career:...
in the one-off BBC drama Hancock and Joan
Hancock and Joan
Hancock and Joan was a 2008 BBC Four biopic television film based on the affair between Joan Le Mesurier and the comedian Tony Hancock. It was first transmitted on 26 March 2008 as part of the Curse of Comedy season. Hancock was portrayed by Ken Stott, Joan by Maxine Peake and John by Alex...
.
In June 2008 he made his operatic debut at the ENO in Robert Carsen's production of Bernstein's Candide, in which he played Voltaire and Doctor Pangloss. In 2009 he appeared in The Habit of Art
The Habit of Art
The Habit of Art is a 2009 play by English playwright Alan Bennett, centred on a fictional meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten while Britten is composing the opera Death in Venice...
as Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
.