Edward Petherbridge
Encyclopedia
Edward Petherbridge is a British
actor
. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey
in several screen adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers
' novel
s.
At the time of National Service
in the 1950s he was a conscientious objector
A stalwart member of Laurence Olivier
's National Theatre
Company in the 1960s, he created the role of Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard
's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
. At the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 1980, he was a memorable Newman Noggs in the company's adaptation of Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
. He has spent extended periods with both national companies since then, where he occasionally collaborated with Sir Ian McKellen
. In the mid-'80s, he and McKellen formed an actor-centered troupe within the National Theatre; their first productions were Chekhov
's The Cherry Orchard
and John Webster
's The Duchess of Malfi
.
Edward Petherbridge first came to the attention of American audiences in the already mentioned play version of The Life And Times Of Nicholas Nickleby. First televised in 1982, this lengthy adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel had been performed on the London stage and later in New York. Petherbridge was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
for his performance of Newman Noggs.
Petherbridge next appeared on the American stage in Strange Interlude
opposite Glenda Jackson
. For his performance as Charles Marsden, Petherbridge was again honored with a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a play. The same year, he premiered his one-person show Acting Natural as a fundraiser for the Riverside Shakespeare Company
at The Shakespeare Center
on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This was the theatre company that Petherbridge had assisted with a fundraiser with his wife, Emily Richard, and Roger Rees
in 1982.
Petherbridge continued to be seen on American television in such miniseries as Noble House
(1988 with Pierce Brosnan
), Gulliver's Travels
(1996 with Ted Danson
), and A Christmas Carol
(1999 with Patrick Stewart
).
An actor of many facets, Petherbridge's talents have been seen on the London stage. His recent performances were at the London Palladium in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
as The Toymaker and at the Palace Theatre
in the Woman in White, playing Mr. Fairlie. He appeared in Michael Frayn
's Donkeys' Years in 2006. Other English productions Petherbridge has starred in include: Valentine's Day, Twelfth Night and Busman's Honeymoon (co-starring with his wife, Emily Richard
). He is currently appearing in "The Fantasticks" at the Duchess Theatre in London, England.
His latest TV appearance is in the 2008 episode of Midsomer Murders
"Death in a Chocolate Box" as Lord Holm.
Petherbridge is married to the actress Emily Richard
, with whom he has two children, Arthur and Dora. They live in West Hampstead
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...
in several screen adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
' novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s.
At the time of National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
in the 1950s he was a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
A stalwart member of Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
's 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...
Company in the 1960s, he created the role of Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
. At the 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...
in 1980, he was a memorable Newman Noggs in the company's adaptation of Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (play)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is an eight-hour stage play, presented over two performances, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel of the same name by David Edgar. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn, it opened on 5 June 1980 at the Aldwych Theatre in London. The music and lyrics...
. He has spent extended periods with both national companies since then, where he occasionally collaborated with Sir Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
. In the mid-'80s, he and McKellen formed an actor-centered troupe within the National Theatre; their first productions were Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
and John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
's The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613-14...
.
Edward Petherbridge first came to the attention of American audiences in the already mentioned play version of The Life And Times Of Nicholas Nickleby. First televised in 1982, this lengthy adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel had been performed on the London stage and later in New York. Petherbridge was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
This is a list of the winners and nominations of Tony Award for the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play. The award has been presented since 1949.-1950s:* 1951: Eli Wallach – The Rose Tattoo* 1952: John Cromwell – Point of No Return...
for his performance of Newman Noggs.
Petherbridge next appeared on the American stage in Strange Interlude
Strange Interlude
Strange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...
opposite Glenda Jackson
Glenda Jackson
Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...
. For his performance as Charles Marsden, Petherbridge was again honored with a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a play. The same year, he premiered his one-person show Acting Natural as a fundraiser for the Riverside Shakespeare Company
Riverside Shakespeare Company
The Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City was founded in 1977 as a professional theatre company on the Upper West Side of New York City, by W. Stuart McDowell and Gloria Skurski...
at The Shakespeare Center
The Shakespeare Center
The Shakespeare Center was the home of the Riverside Shakespeare Company, an Equity professional theatre company in New York City, beginning in 1982, when the then six-year-old theatre company established its center of theatre production and advanced actor training at the 90 year-old West Park...
on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This was the theatre company that Petherbridge had assisted with a fundraiser with his wife, Emily Richard, and Roger Rees
Roger Rees
Roger Rees is a Welsh actor. He is best known to American audiences for playing the characters Robin Colcord on the American television sitcom show Cheers and Lord John Marbury on the American television drama The West Wing...
in 1982.
Petherbridge continued to be seen on American television in such miniseries as Noble House
Noble House
Noble House is a novel by James Clavell, published in 1981 and set in Hong Kong in 1963.It is a massive book, well over 1000 pages, with dozens of characters and numerous intermingling plot lines. In 1988, it was adapted as a television miniseries for NBC starring Pierce Brosnan...
(1988 with Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years...
), Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
(1996 with Ted Danson
Ted Danson
Edward Bridge “Ted” Danson III is an American actor best known for his role as central character Sam Malone in the sitcom Cheers, and his role as Dr. John Becker on the series Becker. He also plays a recurring role on Larry David's HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and starred alongside Glenn Close...
), and A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
(1999 with Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
).
An actor of many facets, Petherbridge's talents have been seen on the London stage. His recent performances were at the London Palladium in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (musical)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also known as Chitty the Musical, is a stage musical based on the 1968 film produced by Cubby Broccoli. The music and lyrics were written by Richard and Robert Sherman with book by Jeremy Sams.-Productions:...
as The Toymaker and at the Palace Theatre
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
in the Woman in White, playing Mr. Fairlie. He appeared in Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn
Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
's Donkeys' Years in 2006. Other English productions Petherbridge has starred in include: Valentine's Day, Twelfth Night and Busman's Honeymoon (co-starring with his wife, Emily Richard
Emily Richard
Emily Richard is a British actress and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.One of three sisters, Richard attended drama school in London in 1966 aged 18, but she was asked to leave after a year as she was "too timid". She then sold programmes in theatres in London's West End...
). He is currently appearing in "The Fantasticks" at the Duchess Theatre in London, England.
His latest TV appearance is in the 2008 episode of Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders is a British television detective drama that has aired on ITV since 1997. The show is based on the books by Caroline Graham, as originally adapted by Anthony Horowitz. The lead character is DCI Tom Barnaby who works for Causton CID. When Nettles left the show in 2011 he was...
"Death in a Chocolate Box" as Lord Holm.
Petherbridge is married to the actress Emily Richard
Emily Richard
Emily Richard is a British actress and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.One of three sisters, Richard attended drama school in London in 1966 aged 18, but she was asked to leave after a year as she was "too timid". She then sold programmes in theatres in London's West End...
, with whom he has two children, Arthur and Dora. They live in West Hampstead
West Hampstead
West Hampstead is an area in northwest London, England, situated between Childs Hill to the north, Frognal and Hampstead to the north-east, Swiss Cottage to the east, and South Hampstead to the south. Until the late 19th century, the locale was a small village called West End...
.