Peter Polycarpou
Encyclopedia
Peter Polycarpou is a British
stage and TV and film actor
, best known for playing Chris Theodopolopoudos in the television comedy series Birds of a Feather
.
alongside Madonna
, Oklahoma!
and De-Lovely
. On stage, he was the first actor to play the role of John in the musical Miss Saigon
in London. He was an original cast member of the musical Les Misérables
, and has played The Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber
's The Phantom of the Opera
. He has also appeared in the UK première of The Woods by David Mamet
at the Finborough Theatre
, London. Television work has included The Bill
, Holby City
, Casualty
and Waking the Dead
.
In February 2006, Polycarpou appeared in EastEnders
, playing Yannis Pappas, father-in-law of character Carly Wicks
for 3 episodes. More recently he played a leading role in the movie O Jerusalem
, released in 2007. He also starred in a short film Broken alongside Michelle Collins
playing the leading role of Solomon. The film, about a Greek Cypriot immigrant family in 1960s London won several international awards. He wrote and co-directed his own short film Mad George with ex-musician and long time friend John Hoare. The film has shown at several International Film Festivals.
Recent work includes playing Gash in Bryony Lavery
's play Last Easter, directed by Douglas Hodge
, at the Door Theatre in Birmingham, and the leading role of Daniel Warshowsky in the new musical Imagine This
at the New London Theatre in 2008.
In 2010, he starred alongside Sean Bean
and Charlotte Rampling
in the terrorist thriller, Cleanskin
which will be released in 2011. He also appeared in the eighth series of Hustle
for BBCTV directed by actor Adrian Lester
.
From 29th May to 26th February 2011, he appeared alongside Emma Williams
and Michael Xavier in the Chichester Festival Theatre's
Love Story
. It later transferred to The Duchess Theatre where it had a short run.
He also worked at Chichester Festival Theatre
between September 24th and November 5th 2011 - playing Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd
(alongside Love Story producer Michael Ball
as Sweeney Todd).
and once stood for local election in the Muswell Hill
ward. He is patron of the United Kingdom Thalassaemia Society and has run in the London Marathon
three times.
Polycarpou is also a drama teacher and has developed a one day workshop which he teaches in youth theatres and schools throughout the UK. He recently directed a production of the Les Misérables Schools edition for the Act Too Youth theatre in Sussex, UK. He also produced the same production with his company, Through The Stage Door, at the Paul Robeson Theatre in Hounslow in April 2010, as well as with MasterAct at the Wilde Theatre in Bracknell in July.
Polycarpou is the patron of First Stages www.firststages.org.uk, a musical theatre youth group based in Devizes, Wiltshire. He takes an active part in the group and regularly coaches and directs whenever he can.
Polycarpou takes an active interest in the Cypriot Film Festival UK and is also a Water Rat.
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...
stage and TV and film 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...
, best known for playing Chris Theodopolopoudos in the television comedy series Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather was a British sitcom that was broadcast on BBC1 from 1989 until 1998. Starring Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph, it was created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also wrote some of the episodes along with many other writers.The first episode sees sisters...
.
Career
Polycarpou's work in movies include EvitaEvita (film)
Evita is the 1996 film adaptation of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical of the same name based on the life of Eva Perón. It was directed by Alan Parker and written by Parker and Oliver Stone. It starred Madonna, Antonio Banderas, and Jonathan Pryce...
alongside Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
and De-Lovely
De-Lovely
De-Lovely is a 2004 musical biopic directed by Irwin Winkler. The screenplay by Jay Cocks is based on the life and career of Cole Porter, from his first meeting with Linda Lee Thomas until his death...
. On stage, he was the first actor to play the role of John in the musical Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...
in London. He was an original cast member of the musical Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
, and has played The Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
's The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...
. He has also appeared in the UK première of The Woods by David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
at the Finborough Theatre
Finborough Theatre
The Finborough Theatre is a fifty seat theatre in the Earls Court area of London, United Kingdom , which presents new British writing, UK and premieres of new plays, primarily from the English speaking world including North America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland, music theatre, and rarely seen...
, London. Television work has included The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
, Holby City
Holby City
Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...
, Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
and Waking the Dead
Waking the Dead (TV series)
Waking the Dead is a British television police procedural crime drama series produced by the BBC featuring a fictional Cold Case Unit comprising CID police officers, a psychological profiler and a forensic scientist. A pilot episode aired in September 2000 and there have been a total of nine series...
.
In February 2006, Polycarpou appeared in EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
, playing Yannis Pappas, father-in-law of character Carly Wicks
Carly Wicks
Carly Wicks is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Kellie Shirley, and by Michaela Stephen in a home movie the Wickses watched on 23 April 2007. She made her first appearance on 17 February 2006. Carly was axed from the serial after Phil Daniels quit. Carly is...
for 3 episodes. More recently he played a leading role in the movie O Jerusalem
O Jerusalem
O Jerusalem! is a history book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins which seeks to capture the events and struggles surrounding the creation of the state of Israel.-Introduction:...
, released in 2007. He also starred in a short film Broken alongside Michelle Collins
Michelle Collins
Michelle Danielle Collins is a British actress best known for her roles on television in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, as Cindy Beale, Coronation Street as Stella Price, and BBC dramas Sunburn and Two Thousand Acres of Sky...
playing the leading role of Solomon. The film, about a Greek Cypriot immigrant family in 1960s London won several international awards. He wrote and co-directed his own short film Mad George with ex-musician and long time friend John Hoare. The film has shown at several International Film Festivals.
Recent work includes playing Gash in Bryony Lavery
Bryony Lavery
Bryony Lavery is a British dramatist, known for her successful and award-winning 1998 play Frozen. In addition to her work in theatre, she has also written for television and radio...
's play Last Easter, directed by Douglas Hodge
Douglas Hodge
Douglas Hodge is an English actor, director, and musician who trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.Hodge is a council member of the National Youth Theatre for whom, in 1989, he co-wrote Pacha Mama's Blessing about the Amazon rain forests staged at the Almeida...
, at the Door Theatre in Birmingham, and the leading role of Daniel Warshowsky in the new musical Imagine This
Imagine This
Imagine This is a musical with music by Shuki Levy, lyrics by David Goldsmith and a book by Glenn Berenbeim. Set in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, it focuses on a family of actors trying to stage a play about the siege at ancient Masada to inspire hope and optimism within the Jewish...
at the New London Theatre in 2008.
In 2010, he starred alongside Sean Bean
Sean Bean
Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe...
and Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling, OBE is an English actress. Her career spans four decades in English-language as well as French and Italian cinema.- Early life :...
in the terrorist thriller, Cleanskin
Cleanskin (film)
Cleanskin is an upcoming terrorist thriller, written, directed and produced by Hadi Hajaig. It stars Sean Bean, Abhin Galeya, Charlotte Rampling, James Fox, Tuppence Middleton and Michelle Ryan.-Plot:...
which will be released in 2011. He also appeared in the eighth series of Hustle
Hustle
Hustle commonly refers to:* A confidence trick, deceptions performed by hustlers or grifters* The tradecraft of a hustler who deceives others by hustling, usually in sports* A slang word in America, meaning to get money, with no concern as to the legallity...
for BBCTV directed by actor Adrian Lester
Adrian Lester
-Personal life:Lester was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Jamaican immigrants Monica, a medical secretary, and Reginald, a manager for a contract cleaning company. He sang as a boy treble in the choir of St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham...
.
From 29th May to 26th February 2011, he appeared alongside Emma Williams
Emma Williams (actress)
Emma Williams is a British actress. After, going to North Halifax Grammar School and studying at the Stage84 stage school in Idle, West Yorkshire, she has had a successful career in TV, film and on stage....
and Michael Xavier in the Chichester Festival Theatre's
Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....
Love Story
Love Story (musical)
Love Story is a musical written by Stephen Clark withmusic by Howard Goodall and lyrics by Stephen Clark and Goodall. It is inspired by Erich Segal’s best-selling novel of the same name...
. It later transferred to The Duchess Theatre where it had a short run.
He also worked at Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....
between September 24th and November 5th 2011 - playing Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd (musical)
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1979 musical thriller with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and libretto by Hugh Wheeler. The musical is based on the 1973 play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Christopher Bond....
(alongside Love Story producer Michael Ball
Michael Ball
Michael Ball may refer to:* Michael Ball , English singer and actor* Michael Ball , American football player* Michael Ball , English football player...
as Sweeney Todd).
Philanthropy and Culture
Polycarpou is a member of the Green PartyGreen Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...
and once stood for local election in the Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill is a suburb of north London, mostly in the London Borough of Haringey. It is situated about north of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. Muswell Hill is in the N10 postal district and mostly in the Hornsey and Wood Green parliamentary constituency.- History :The...
ward. He is patron of the United Kingdom Thalassaemia Society and has run in the London Marathon
London Marathon
The London Marathon is one of the biggest running events in the world, and one of the five top world marathons that make up the World Marathon Majors competition, which has a $1 million prize purse. It has been held each spring in London since 1981. The race is currently sponsored by Virgin Money,...
three times.
Polycarpou is also a drama teacher and has developed a one day workshop which he teaches in youth theatres and schools throughout the UK. He recently directed a production of the Les Misérables Schools edition for the Act Too Youth theatre in Sussex, UK. He also produced the same production with his company, Through The Stage Door, at the Paul Robeson Theatre in Hounslow in April 2010, as well as with MasterAct at the Wilde Theatre in Bracknell in July.
Polycarpou is the patron of First Stages www.firststages.org.uk, a musical theatre youth group based in Devizes, Wiltshire. He takes an active part in the group and regularly coaches and directs whenever he can.
Polycarpou takes an active interest in the Cypriot Film Festival UK and is also a Water Rat.