Jasper Britton
Encyclopedia
Jasper Britton, in is an 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...

.

Britton is the son of veteran actor Tony Britton
Tony Britton
Anthony Edward Lowry "Tony" Britton is an English actor. He is the father of presenter Fern Britton, scriptwriter Cherry Britton and actor Jasper Britton.-Life and career:...

, and Danish sculptor and member of the World War II Danish Resistance Eva Castle Britton (née Skytte Birkefeldt). His half-sisters are television presenter Fern Britton
Fern Britton
Fern Britton is an English television presenter, known as the former main co-presenter on the ITV magazine programme This Morning alongside Phillip Schofield. She left the show on 17 July 2009, her 52nd birthday.- Early life :...

 and scriptwriter Cherry Britton.

Background

Born in Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, Britton attended Belmont Prep and Mill Hill School
Mill Hill School
Mill Hill School, in Mill Hill, London, is a coeducational independent school for boarding and day pupils aged 13–18. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, an organisation of public schools in the United Kingdom....

, where he achieved a grade 'Unclassifed' in Maths O-Level
Ordinary Level
The O-level is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education . It was introduced as part of British educational reform in the 1950s alongside the more in-depth and academically rigorous Advanced Level in England, Wales and Northern Ireland A-level...

, but where also, bored during a history lesson, he turned over the paper on which he was doodling to discover it was a script of his father's, started to read it, and began a long love affair with the theatre.

Stage

Britton worked for six years as an assistant stage manager and sound operator
Sound operator
The sound operator is the person responsible for the overall and total execution of all sound-related aspects of a theatrical performance...

 until 1989 when, while working for Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

 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 forced his way into Miller's office and refused to leave until Miller agreed to let him audition for King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

. His King of France to Eric Porter
Eric Porter
Eric Richard Porter was an English actor of stage, film and television.-Early life:Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth Spall...

's Lear was the beginning of a prolific stage career.

Early plays included The Visit
The Visit
The Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...

with Theatre de Complicite at 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...

, 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...

, Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

and A Flea in her Ear at Nottingham Playhouse
Nottingham Playhouse
The Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in the 1950s when it operated from a former cinema. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop.-The building:...

. A season 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...

 included A Jovial Crew
A Jovial Crew
A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome. First staged in 1641 or 1642 and first published in 1652, it is generally ranked as one of Brome's best plays, and one of the best comedies of the Caroline period; in one critic's view, Brome's The...

for Max Stafford-Clarke, Tamburlaine for Terry Hands
Terry Hands
Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...

 and The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

and Anthony and Cleopatra for John Caird. There followed the Dauphin in St Joan at the Strand Theatre
Novello Theatre
The Novello Theatre is a West End theatre on Aldwych, in the City of Westminster.-History:The theatre was built as one of a pair with the Aldwych Theatre on either side of the Waldorf Hotel, both being designed by W. G. R. Sprague. The theatre opened as the Waldorf Theatre on 22 May 1905, and was...

 and an award winning performance as Rupert in Rope
Rope (play)
Rope is a 1929 British play by Patrick Hamilton. In formal terms, it is a well-made play with a three-act dramatic structure that adheres to the classical unities. Its action is continuous, punctuated only by the curtain fall at the end of each act. It may also be considered a thriller whose...

at Salisbury Playhouse.

It was on replacing Eddie Izzard
Eddie Izzard
Edward John "Eddie" Izzard is a British stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime...

 in the title role in Brian Cox's 1995 Richard III
Richard III (play)
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...

and opening to rave reviews that Britton emerged as one of the prominent actors of his generation. He next played the groom role in Blood Wedding
Bodas de sangre
Blood Wedding is a tragedy by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1932 and first performed in Madrid in March 1933 and later that year in Buenos Aires...

at the Young Vic, the first in a series of romantic leads, followed by Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

's adaptation of End of the Affair, Jonathan Church
Jonathan Church
Jonathan Church is a British stage director.He is the son of the actor Tony Church and the actress Marielaine Douglas.Church was the artistic director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and since 2006 he has been the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre.-References:...

's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

, and Bill Bryden
Bill Bryden
William Campbell Rough Bryden CBE is a British stage- and film director and screenwriter.-Biography:...

's Three Sisters.

Britton was part of 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...

's ensemble company at the National Theatre in 1999, revealing a more playful side as an irreverent character actor in the eccentric repertoire of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...

, Ryumin in Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

's Summerfolk
Summerfolk (play)
Summerfolk is a play written in 1903 by Maxim Gorky. Based in part on the life of the writer Anton Chekhov, it takes place in 1904—the same year that Chekhov died...

, Smooth in Money
Money (play)
Money is a comic play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It premiered at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 8 December 1840.-Production history:The play was revived at the Royal National Theatre in 1999, directed by John Caird and with a cast including Jasper Britton, Roger Allam, Simon Russell Beale, Sophie...

directed by John Caird
John Caird (director)
John Newport Caird is a British stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and the Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre,...

 and revealing a strong singing voice as The Cat in Honk!
Honk!
Honk! is a musical adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Ugly Duckling, incorporating a message of tolerance. The book and lyrics are by Anthony Drewe and music is by George Stiles...

.

Two seasons at the Shakespeare's Globe
Shakespeare's Globe
Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the London Borough of Southwark, located on the south bank of the River Thames, but destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt 1614 then demolished in 1644. The modern reconstruction is an academic best guess, based...

 for Mark Rylance
Mark Rylance
Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...

 followed, first playing Palamon in The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales....

, and in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

a Caliban that has passed into Globe legend, a muddy loveable monster who stole props to hide in his underpants, and who spat fish-heads at the audience. A year later he returned as the title character in Macbeth.

After Simon Gray
Simon Gray
Simon James Holliday Gray, CBE , was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years...

's Japes for Peter Hall at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...

 and Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

's Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...

at the Aldwych Theatre
Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200.-Origins:...

 came Britton's performance as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

and The Tamer Tamed for Greg Doran at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., which was the hit of the season and transferred to the Queen's Theatre
Queen's Theatre
The Queen's Theatre is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It opened on 8 October 1907 as a twin to the neighbouring Gielgud Theatre which opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W.G.R...

 in London for an award-winning sell-out run.

Other stage credits include Henry II in Becket
Becket
Becket or The Honor of God is a play written in French by Jean Anouilh. It is a depiction of the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry II of England leading to Becket's murder in 1170. It contains many historical inaccuracies, which the author acknowledged.-Background:Anouilh's...

at the Haymarket Theatre for John Caird, Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

for Matthew Lloyd, Satan in Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

for Rupert Goold, Adolf in Ibsen's The Father for Angus Jackson, and Jean in Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros (play)
Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...

for Dominic Cooke
Dominic Cooke
Dominic Cooke is an English theatre director and playwright. He won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for best director for his revival of The Crucible while working at the RSC...

.

In 2008 he played John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

 in Nicholas de Jongh
Nicholas de Jongh
Nicholas de Jongh is a British theatre critic and playwright. He served as the senior drama critic of the Evening Standard from 1991 to 2009. Prior to that, he worked for the Guardian newspaper for almost 20 years...

's first play Plague Over England
Plague Over England
Plague Over England is a play written by Nicholas de Jongh, based on an incident that occurred during John Gielgud's life, when he was arrested for lewd behaviour; it offers an insight into the changes of the gay lifestyle over the last fifty years...

, Nansen
Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...

 in Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba...

's Fram
Fram (play)
Fram is a 2008 play by Tony Harrison. It uses the story of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen's attempt to reach the North Pole, and his subsequent campaign to relieve famine in the Soviet Union to explore the role of art in a world beset by seemingly greater issues...

and Creon
Creon
Creon is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the ruler of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus. He had two children with his wife, Eurydice: Megareus and Haemon...

 opposite Ralph Fiennes in Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King , also known by the Latin title Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 BCE. It was the second of Sophocles's three Theban plays to be produced, but it comes first in the internal chronology, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone...

, the latter both at the National Theatre. In 2009 he played Elyot in Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

opposite Claire Price
Claire Price
Claire Price is an English actress. She is best known for her current portrayal as DS Siobhan Clarke in the TV drama Rebus broadcast on the ITV Network...

 at Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...

, directed by Lucy Bailey.

Most recently he played one third of Simon Gray's persona in The Last Cigarette at Chichester Festival Theatre and The Trafalgar Studios, with Felicity Kendal
Felicity Kendal
Felicity Ann Kendal, CBE is an English actor known for her television and stage work.Born in 1946, Kendal spent much of her childhood in India, where her father managed a touring repertory company. First appearing on stage at the age of nine months, Kendal appeared in her first film, Shakespeare...

 and Nicholas Le Prevost
Nicholas Le Prevost
Nicholas Le Prevost is an English actor. He was educated at Shaftesbury Grammar School, Shaftesbury, Dorset from 1957 to 1961 and at Kingswood School, Bath from 1961 to 1964...

.

Film

Britton played the Court Laureate in Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....

's The New World alongside Colin Farrell
Colin Farrell
Colin James Farrell is an Irish actor, who has appeared in such film as Tigerland, Miami Vice, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit, Alexander and S.W.A.T....

, Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce, CBE is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s...

 and Christian Bale
Christian Bale
Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. Best known for his roles in American films, Bale has starred in both big budget Hollywood films and the smaller projects from independent producers and art houses....

. He most recently donned bells and hankies to play Will Frosser, the foreman of the Millsham Morris Side in the forthcoming feature film, Morris: A Life with Bells On, which also features Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

, Harriet Walter
Harriet Walter
Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...

, Greg Wise
Greg Wise
Greg Wise is an English actor and producer. He has appeared in many British television works, as well as several feature films .- Early life :...

, Sophie Thompson
Sophie Thompson
Sophie Thompson is an award-winning English actress, best known for playing Stella Crawford in EastEnders.-Early life:...

 and Dominique Pinon
Dominique Pinon
Dominique Pinon is a French actor whose most famous roles have been in the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jean-Jacques Beineix. In the theatre, he has appeared in the plays of Gildas Bourdet, Jorge Lavelli and Valère Novarina...

.

Television

Britton's television credits include two series of My Dad's the Prime Minister
My Dad's the Prime Minister
My Dad's the Prime Minister is a British sitcom written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. It centres around the life of the Prime Minister, his family and his spin doctor...

, and Brief Encounters: Semi-Detached for the BBC, as well as Highlander: The Series
Highlander: The Series
Highlander: The Series is a fantasy-adventure television series featuring Duncan MacLeod of the Scottish Clan MacLeod, as the Highlander. It was an offshoot and another alternate sequel of the 1986 feature film with a twist: Connor MacLeod did not win the prize and Immortals still exist post-1985...

.

He appeared in two 2006 TV movies: as pirate William Howard in Blackbeard
Blackbeard (film)
Blackbeard is an adventure–drama miniseries based on the pirate Blackbeard. It premiered on Hallmark Channel on June 17, 2006. The Kevin Connor film was shot on location in Thailand, the town of New Providence built on a coconut plantation...

with Mark Umbers
Mark Umbers
Mark Umbers is an English actor known for his work in theatre, films, and television.Born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, Umbers was brought up in Wetherby. In 1991 he enrolled at Oxford University to study Latin and Greek Literature and Philosophy...

 and Stacey Keach, and alongside Oliver Dimsdale and Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...

 in as Henry II
Henry II of France
Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...

 in Nostradamus.

Personal life

He is a Garrick Club member, collector of vintage pond yachts, member of the Vintage Model Yacht Group, and a keen motorcyclist.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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