Robert Bathurst
Encyclopedia
Robert Guy Bathurst is an English actor. Bathurst was born in the Gold Coast
in 1957, where his father was working as a management consultant. His family moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1959 and Bathurst was enrolled at an Anglican boarding school
. In 1966, the family moved to England, and Bathurst transferred to Worth School in West Sussex, where he took up amateur dramatics. At the age of 18, he read law at the University of Cambridge
and joined the Cambridge Footlights group. After graduating, he took up acting full time.
He made his professional stage debut in 1983, playing Tim Allgood in Michael Frayn
's Noises Off
, which ran for a year at the Savoy Theatre
. To broaden his knowledge of working on stage, he joined the National Theatre
. He supplemented his stage roles in the 1980s with television roles, appearing in comedies such as the aborted pilot episode of Blackadder
, The Lenny Henry Show
, and the first episode of Red Dwarf
. In 1991, he won his first major television role playing Mark Taylor in Steven Moffat
's semi-autobiographical BBC
sitcom Joking Apart
. Although only thirteen episodes were made between 1991 and 1995, the role remains Bathurst's favourite of his whole career. After Joking Apart concluded, he was cast as pompous management consultant David Marsden in the ITV
comedy drama Cold Feet
, which ran for five series from 1998 to 2003.
Since 2003, Bathurst has played a fictional prime minister
in the BBC sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister
, Mark Thatcher
in the fact-based drama Coup!, and a man whose daughter goes missing in the ITV thriller The Stepfather. He also made a return to theatre roles, playing Vershinin in The Three Sisters (2003), Adrien in the two-hander Members Only (2006), government whip Alistair in Whipping it Up (2006–2007), and Alex in Alex (2007, 2008). In the following years he starred in the television dramas The Pillars of the Earth
(2010), Downton Abbey
(2010), Hattie
(2011) and joined the cast of Wild at Heart
(2011). Bathurst appeared in in his first Noël Coward
play, Present Laughter
, in 2010 and followed it with a role in Blithe Spirit
in 2010 and 2011. He is married and has four children.
, Gold Coast
(modern-day Ghana
) on 22 February 1957 to Philip Bathurst and Gillian Bathurst (née Debenham). His father was a major in the Royal Engineers
during the second world war
and was working in West Africa as a management consultant, and his mother was a physiotherapist. They had two other children; Nicholas and Charlotte. The family lived in Ghana until 1959 when they moved to Ballybrack
, Dublin, Ireland. Bathurst and his brother attended two schools in Dublin—the Holy Child school in Killiney
and a school in Ballsbridge
—before being sent to a preparatory school
in Kells, County Meath
. He compared the time he and his brother, Catholics
, spent at the Anglican boarding school
to Lord of the Flies
; "we were incarcerated in a huge, stinking, Georgian house, where we were treated very brutally."
In 1966, the family moved to England. Bathurst transferred to the Worth Abbey boarding school
in Sussex
, which he much preferred to the school in Kells. At the age of 13, he began acting in minor skits and revues and read old copies of Plays and Players magazine, "studying floor plans of theatres and reading about new theatres being built". He had first become interested in acting when his family saw a pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, and he watched actors waiting for their cues in the wings.
He left Worth at the age of 18 to read law at Pembroke College
, Cambridge
. Describing himself as "hopeless at anything academic", he spent much of his time at university performing in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Hugh Laurie
, Rory McGrath
and Emma Thompson
. From 1977–78, he was the secretary of the group, and from 1978–79 the president. Among the Footlights Revues he participated in were Stage Fright in 1978, which he also co-wrote, and Nightcap in 1979. He also directed and appeared in the Footlights pantomime Aladdin as Widow Twankey
during the 1978–79 season. He took the Bar Vocational Course in London, which allowed him to go on to become a practising barrister, but stuck to acting instead.
series Injury Time
, alongside fellow Footlights performers Rory McGrath and Emma Thompson. His first role for television came in 1982 when he appeared as Prince Henry in the unaired pilot episode of Blackadder
. He had already appeared in a training video by director Geoff Posner
and got the role of Henry by way of thanks. The character was recast and downgraded when the series was commissioned as The Black Adder
.
Bathurst's professional stage debut came the next year when he joined the second cast of Michael Frayn
's Noises Off
at the Savoy Theatre
. He replaced Roger Lloyd Pack
as Tim Allgood and stayed at the Savoy for a year. Between roles, he worked as a television presenter for BBC East
. After declining an offer to be a presenter of That's Life!
he joined the National Theatre
in 1984, where he appeared as a background actor in Saint Joan
. He regards it as "the most demoralising" job he has ever had but was grateful for the theatre experience it gave him. In 1986, he was persuaded by a casting director to audition for the part of James Bond
, but only because the producers of The Living Daylights
wanted to persuade Timothy Dalton
to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning other actors. The following year, he appeared as Andrei Vukhov in Judgement, a monologue. The opening night audience was made up of three people but he believes he worked harder in that one play than the rest of his career.
He continued to make minor appearances in television throughout the 1980s; in 1987, he auditioned for the role of Dave Lister
in the BBC North
science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf
. The part eventually went to Craig Charles
but Bathurst was given a role in the first episode of the series as Frank Todhunter, who is killed in the first ten minutes. Ten years later, Bathurst was invited to reprise the role when a storyline in the series allowed former characters to return, but filming commitments prevented him from appearing. In 1989, he appeared in Malcolm Bradbury
's Anything More Would Be Greedy for Anglia Television
, playing Dennis Medlam, MP. The programme was broadcast in 1990 to little fanfare. In 1990, he performed on Up Yer News, a live topical programme broadcast on BSB
.
While working on Up Yer News, Bathurst auditioned for a one-off television comedy called Joking Apart
. Earlier in the day, he noticed a fellow Up Yer News performer reading the script to prepare for his own audition. As Bathurst went into the audition room, his colleague was leaving, and told Bathurst he would "break his legs" if he got the part, a threat that seemed not to be "entirely jocular". Bathurst got the part, and the pilot of Joking Apart was broadcast as an installment of the BBC 2 Comic Asides strand. It returned for two series in 1993 and 1995. Bathurst appeared as sitcom writer Mark Taylor in the series. After the first series was broadcast, a critic called Bathurst the "Best Comedy Newcomer of 1993".
The show was punctuated by fantasy sequences in which his character performed his thoughts as a stand-up routine in a small club. In the commentary and the interview on the DVD, Bathurst says that he was told that they would be reshot after filming everything else, an idea abandoned because of the expense. He has an idea of refilming the sequences 'now', as his older self, to give them a more retrospective feeling. He has also said that he believes Mark was too "designery" and wishes that he had "roughened him up a bit". The role is his favourite of his whole career; he has described it as "the most enjoyable job I will ever do" and considers several episodes of the series to be "timeless, beautifully constructed farces which will endure". Bathurst is often recognised for his appearance in this series, mentioning that "Drunks stop me on public transport and tell me details of the plot of their favourite episode". As punishment for arriving late for the series one press launch at the Café Royal
in Regent Street
, London, writer Steven Moffat
pledged to write an episode in which Mark is naked throughout. To a large extent, this vow is realised in the second series.
Between 1991 and 1995, Bathurst also appeared on television in No Job for a Lady
, The House of Eliott
and The Detectives
, and on stage in The Choice, Getting Married
and The Nose
. He also filmed a role in The Wind in the Willows
(Terry Jones
, 1996) as St John Weasel.
at the Salisbury Playhouse, Bathurst got an audition for the Granada Television
comedy pilot Cold Feet
. He arrived for the audition "bearded and shaggy", on account of his role in the play, and did not expect to win the role of upper-middle-class management consultant David Marsden. The role in the pilot was only minor, and created at the last minute to support characters played by James Nesbitt
and Helen Baxendale
; the only character note in the script about David related to his high salary. Bathurst identified the character as merely a "post-Thatcherite whipping boy".
Bathurst reprised the role in the Cold Feet
series, which ran for five years from 1998 to 2003. He described the character of David as an "emotional cripple", originally with little depth. The third series features an affair between David and a political activist played by Yasmin Bannerman
. Bathurst appreciated the opportunity to bring some depth a previously one-dimensional character but was more impressed with the storylines that came out of the affair, rather than the affair itself: "It was the deception, the guilt and the recrimination rather than the actual affair, which was neither interesting nor remarkable". Like other cast members, Bathurst was able to suggest storylines as the series went on; one episode features David celebrating his fortieth birthday and Bathurst suggested the character could get a Harley-Davidson
motorbike. Granada paid for him to take motorcycle lessons and a test. On the day before his test, the filming of a scene where David takes off on his new bike was scheduled. Bathurst "wobbled, missed the camera and crashed into the pavement" leading director Simon Delaney
to exclaim it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. In another episode, David buys a racehorse—ostensibly as a birthday present for his wife—in a plot borne out of Bathurst's own love of horseracing. The role made him more widely recognisable and he often received prospective scripts that were "obvious rewrites of the character". He turned them down, preferring to play a "good person", which would be more interesting from a dramatic point of view.
Between 1998 and 2003, he made television appearances in Goodbye, Mr Steadman (2001), starring opposite Caroline Quentin
as a headmaster who has been declared dead after one of his pupils erases all computer records relating to him, and the adaptation of White Teeth
(2002). On stage he appeared in Michael Frayn's Alarms and Excursions in 1998 and in Hedda Gabler
in 1999, his last theatre role for several years. In The Daily Telegraph
, Charles Spencer
described his role as Tesman as a "weird casting choice" but called his acting "a brave stab". In 2001, Bathurst appeared in the music video for Westlife
's Comic Relief
single "Uptown Girl".
In 2002, straight after finishing Cold Feet, Bathurst went straight into filming My Dad's the Prime Minister
, a series in which he portrays fictional British prime minister Michael Philips. The first series was broadcast in a Sunday afternoon CBBC
slot in 2003. He watched debates in the House of Commons
to prepare for the role but did not base his portrayal on Tony Blair
. In 2003, he returned to theatre for the first time in four years to play Vershinin in The Three Sisters, opposite Kristin Scott Thomas
and Eric Sykes
. He had not seen The Three Sisters before starring in it. Director Michael Blakemore
advised him to turn this to his advantage, as he would not feel he had to live up to previous portrayals. After its run concluded, a special edition of The Three Sisters was filmed with the same cast for television broadcast on BBC Four
. In 2005, the second series of My Dad's the Prime Minister was broadcast, now moved to a Friday night timeslot to take advantage of the adult humour. The same year, he starred in the ITV thriller The Stepfather playing Christopher Veazey, a man whose daughter goes missing. Bathurst was pleased that this white-collar worker had an emotional side, in comparison to David Marsden, whom he used as a yardstick when accepting those sorts of roles. Also in 2005, he played Mr Sesseman in an adaptation of Heidi
and Dottore Massimo in The Thief Lord
.
in Coup!, a dramatisation of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea
. He also starred as Adrien opposite Nicholas Tennant in the UK premiere of Members Only at the Trafalgar Studios
. He accepted the part because it was "funny, plausible, plausibly absurd, and cruel" and he liked that it was a translation from an original French play. He enjoyed working on it, telling What's on Stage, "Nick is a really good actor and really good to work with in that you can have completely frank discussions about tiny issues and it's totally ego-free. We're all just discussing the point and not playing games with each other. It does make the working practice easier. If there's only two of you in a play, you are equally responsible—there's nobody else to blame if it goes wrong. So its a greater risk and there's no hiding." At the end of the year, he appeared opposite Richard Wilson in Whipping it Up, a play about whips in a fictional David Cameron
government. To research his role, he watched more Commons debates.
After a season at the Bush Theatre
at the end of 2006, Whipping it Up transferred to the New Ambassadors Theatre
from March to June 2007, then went on a national tour from September to November 2007. The tour coincided with his appearance as the titular character in Alex, based on the comic in The Daily Telegraph
. The play ran at the Arts Theatre
between October and November 2007 and featured Bathurst interacting with other characters that are projected onto a screen behind him. He was attracted to the role because of the "duplicity and guile" Alex uses to get himself out of tight situations. The role won him a nomination for Best Solo Performance at the What's on Stage Awards. He reprised the role in an international tour from September to November 2008. 2007 also saw Bathurst perform as linguistician Charles in the first series of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Hut 33
. He reprised the role for two more series in 2008 and 2009.
In 2009, he made his third and final appearance as art dealer James Garrett in My Family. He also played the role of Mr Weston in the BBC costume drama Emma
, which was broadcast on BBC One through October 2009. He previously played Weston in a two-part adaptation of Emma for BBC Radio 4 in 2000. Between January and April 2010, Bathurst starred as Garry Essendine in a national touring revival of Noël Coward
's Present Laughter
. He had not seen Present Laughter before, though had seen several Coward plays in his 20s, and did not imitate Coward's speech patterns while performing. Present Laughter was the first time Bathurst had appeared in a Coward play, and he was cast in another, Blithe Spirit
, later in the year. He plays Charles Condomine opposite Alison Steadman
and his Cold Feet co-star Hermione Norris
. The played toured theatres around southern England in 2010 and early 2011 before beginning a three-month run at the Apollo Theatre
in London.
On television in 2010, Bathurst starred as Percy Hamleigh in the German-Canadian miniseries The Pillars of the Earth
and had a recurring role as widower Sir Anthony Strallan in the period drama Downton Abbey
. In 2011 he starred as John Le Mesurier
in the Hattie Jacques
biopic Hattie
, and joined the cast of the long-running ITV drama Wild at Heart
. He is due to reunite with his Joking Apart co-star Fiona Gillies for the independent feature film City Slacker, which is scheduled to begin filming in 2011.
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...
in 1957, where his father was working as a management consultant. His family moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1959 and Bathurst was enrolled at an Anglican boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
. In 1966, the family moved to England, and Bathurst transferred to Worth School in West Sussex, where he took up amateur dramatics. At the age of 18, he read law at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
and joined the Cambridge Footlights group. After graduating, he took up acting full time.
He made his professional stage debut in 1983, playing Tim Allgood 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 Noises Off
Noises Off
Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
, which ran for a year at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
. To broaden his knowledge of working on stage, he joined the 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...
. He supplemented his stage roles in the 1980s with television roles, appearing in comedies such as the aborted pilot episode of Blackadder
Blackadder
Blackadder is the name that encompassed four series of a BBC1 historical sitcom, along with several one-off instalments. All television programme episodes starred Rowan Atkinson as anti-hero Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Blackadder's dogsbody, Baldrick...
, The Lenny Henry Show
The Lenny Henry Show
The Lenny Henry Show is a comedy sketch show featuring Lenny Henry. In its first incarnation it ran for two seasons on BBC 1, in 1984 and 1985. Each season had six episodes. A 40-minute special was aired in December 1987...
, and the first episode of Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
. In 1991, he won his first major television role playing Mark Taylor in Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
's semi-autobiographical BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
sitcom Joking Apart
Joking Apart
Joking Apart is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat about the rise and fall of a relationship. It juxtaposes a couple, Mark and Becky , who fall in love and marry, before getting separated and finally divorced...
. Although only thirteen episodes were made between 1991 and 1995, the role remains Bathurst's favourite of his whole career. After Joking Apart concluded, he was cast as pompous management consultant David Marsden in the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
comedy drama Cold Feet
Cold Feet
Cold Feet is a British comedy-drama television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network. The series was created and principally written by Mike Bullen as a follow-up to his award-winning 1997 Comedy Premiere of the same name. The storyline follows three couples experiencing the...
, which ran for five series from 1998 to 2003.
Since 2003, Bathurst has played a fictional prime minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
in the BBC sitcom 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...
, Mark Thatcher
Mark Thatcher
Sir Mark Thatcher, 2nd Baronet is the son of Sir Denis Thatcher and Baroness Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, and twin brother of Carol Thatcher...
in the fact-based drama Coup!, and a man whose daughter goes missing in the ITV thriller The Stepfather. He also made a return to theatre roles, playing Vershinin in The Three Sisters (2003), Adrien in the two-hander Members Only (2006), government whip Alistair in Whipping it Up (2006–2007), and Alex in Alex (2007, 2008). In the following years he starred in the television dramas The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth (TV miniseries)
The Pillars of the Earth is an eight part 2010 TV miniseries, adapted from Ken Follett's novel of the same name. It debuted in the U.S. on Starz and Canada on The Movie Network/Movie Central on July 23, 2010. Its UK premiere was on Channel 4 in October 2010 at 9pm...
(2010), Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey is a British television period drama series, produced by NBC Universal-owned British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network. The series is set during the late Edwardian era and the First World War on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, and features an...
(2010), Hattie
Hattie (television film)
Hattie is a television film on the life of the British comic actress Hattie Jacques, played by Ruth Jones, her marriage to John Le Mesurier and her affair with their lodger John Schofield...
(2011) and joined the cast of Wild at Heart
Wild at Heart (TV series)
Wild at Heart is a current ITV television drama series about a Bristol-based vet and his family emigrating to start a game park in South Africa. The show premiered in January 2006 and has recently finished screening its sixth series...
(2011). Bathurst appeared in in his first Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
play, 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...
, in 2010 and followed it with a role in Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
in 2010 and 2011. He is married and has four children.
Early life
Robert Guy Bathurst was born in AccraAccra
Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...
, Gold Coast
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...
(modern-day Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
) on 22 February 1957 to Philip Bathurst and Gillian Bathurst (née Debenham). His father was a major in the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
during the second world war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and was working in West Africa as a management consultant, and his mother was a physiotherapist. They had two other children; Nicholas and Charlotte. The family lived in Ghana until 1959 when they moved to Ballybrack
Ballybrack
Ballybrack or Ballybrac is a suburb of Dublin, located in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county. It is south of Killiney and northeast of Loughlinstown....
, Dublin, Ireland. Bathurst and his brother attended two schools in Dublin—the Holy Child school in Killiney
Killiney
Killiney is a suburb of Dublin in south County Dublin, Ireland. It is within the administrative area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County. The area is by the coast, south of neighbouring Dalkey, and north to Shankill area in the most southern outskirt of Dublin....
and a school in Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, named for the bridge spanning the River Dodder on the south side of the city. The sign on the bridge still proclaims it as "Ball's Bridge" in recognition of the fact that the original bridge in this location was built and owned by a Mr...
—before being sent to a preparatory school
Preparatory school (UK)
In English language usage in the former British Empire, the present-day Commonwealth, a preparatory school is an independent school preparing children up to the age of eleven or thirteen for entry into fee-paying, secondary independent schools, some of which are known as public schools...
in Kells, County Meath
Kells, County Meath
Kells is a town in County Meath, Ireland. The town lies off the M3 motorway, from Navan and from Dublin. In recent years Kells has grown greatly with many Dublin commuters moving to the town....
. He compared the time he and his brother, Catholics
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, spent at the Anglican boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
to Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
; "we were incarcerated in a huge, stinking, Georgian house, where we were treated very brutally."
In 1966, the family moved to England. Bathurst transferred to the Worth Abbey boarding school
Worth School
Worth School, near the village of Turners Hill, Crawley, West Sussex, England, is a co-educational Roman Catholic boarding and day independent school for pupils aged between 11–18 years. The school is located with Worth Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, in of Sussex countryside...
in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, which he much preferred to the school in Kells. At the age of 13, he began acting in minor skits and revues and read old copies of Plays and Players magazine, "studying floor plans of theatres and reading about new theatres being built". He had first become interested in acting when his family saw a pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, and he watched actors waiting for their cues in the wings.
He left Worth at the age of 18 to read law at Pembroke College
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
, Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. Describing himself as "hopeless at anything academic", he spent much of his time at university performing in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie
James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE , better known as Hugh Laurie , is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director...
, Rory McGrath
Rory McGrath
Patrick Rory McGrath is an English comedian and writer. He is best known for roles in Who Dares Wins, Chelmsford 123, Three Men in a Boat and its successors. He was also a regular panellist on They Think It's All Over....
and Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...
. From 1977–78, he was the secretary of the group, and from 1978–79 the president. Among the Footlights Revues he participated in were Stage Fright in 1978, which he also co-wrote, and Nightcap in 1979. He also directed and appeared in the Footlights pantomime Aladdin as Widow Twankey
Widow Twankey
Widow Twankey is a female character in the pantomime Aladdin. The character is a pantomime dame, portrayed by a man; and is a comic foil to the principal boy, Aladdin – played by an actress.-History:...
during the 1978–79 season. He took the Bar Vocational Course in London, which allowed him to go on to become a practising barrister, but stuck to acting instead.
Early career
After graduating from Cambridge, Bathurst spent a year touring Australia in the Footlights Revue Botham, The Musical, which he described as "a bunch of callow youths flying round doing press conferences and chat shows". Although he enjoyed his work with Footlights, he did not continue performing with the troupe, worrying that he would be "washed up at 35 having coat-tailed on their success through the early part of [his] career". After leaving, he found that he was considered a dilettante, which resulted in it taking him longer than expected to be accepted as a serious actor. His first professional role out of university was in the BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
series Injury Time
Injury Time (radio series)
Injury Time was a radio comedy programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during the 1980s. The first episode was broadcast in 1980, and it ran for three series. The show starred Robert Bathurst, Martin Bergman, Rory McGrath, Jimmy Mulville and Emma Thompson....
, alongside fellow Footlights performers Rory McGrath and Emma Thompson. His first role for television came in 1982 when he appeared as Prince Henry in the unaired pilot episode of Blackadder
Blackadder
Blackadder is the name that encompassed four series of a BBC1 historical sitcom, along with several one-off instalments. All television programme episodes starred Rowan Atkinson as anti-hero Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Blackadder's dogsbody, Baldrick...
. He had already appeared in a training video by director Geoff Posner
Geoff Posner
Geoffrey Posner is a British television producer and director. Posner has directed and produced some of Britain's most successful comedy shows since the early 1980s....
and got the role of Henry by way of thanks. The character was recast and downgraded when the series was commissioned as The Black Adder
The Black Adder
The Black Adder is the first series of the BBC situation comedy Blackadder, written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, directed by Martin Shardlow and produced by John Lloyd...
.
Bathurst's professional stage debut came the next year when he joined the second cast of 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 Noises Off
Noises Off
Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
. He replaced Roger Lloyd Pack
Roger Lloyd Pack
Roger Lloyd-Pack is an English actor known for his roles in the TV shows The Vicar of Dibley, Only Fools and Horses and The Old Guys.-Career:...
as Tim Allgood and stayed at the Savoy for a year. Between roles, he worked as a television presenter for BBC East
BBC East
BBC East is the BBC English Region serving Norfolk, Suffolk, north Essex, Cambridgeshire, northern and central Hertfordshire, most of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and parts of Buckinghamshire.-Television:...
. After declining an offer to be a presenter of That's Life!
That's Life!
That's Life! was a magazine-style television series on BBC1 between 26 May 1973 and 19 June 1994, presented by Esther Rantzen throughout the entire run, with various changes of co-presenters. The show was generally recorded about an hour prior to transmission, which was originally on Saturday...
he joined the 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 1984, where he appeared as a background actor in Saint Joan
Saint Joan (play)
Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts...
. He regards it as "the most demoralising" job he has ever had but was grateful for the theatre experience it gave him. In 1986, he was persuaded by a casting director to audition for the part of James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
, but only because the producers of The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent 007. The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living Daylights"...
wanted to persuade Timothy Dalton
Timothy Dalton
Timothy Peter Dalton ) is a Welsh actor of film and television. He is known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill , as well as Rhett Butler in the television miniseries Scarlett , an original sequel to Gone with the Wind...
to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning other actors. The following year, he appeared as Andrei Vukhov in Judgement, a monologue. The opening night audience was made up of three people but he believes he worked harder in that one play than the rest of his career.
He continued to make minor appearances in television throughout the 1980s; in 1987, he auditioned for the role of Dave Lister
Dave Lister
David "Dave" Lister, commonly referred to simply as Lister, is a fictional character from the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf, portrayed by Craig Charles...
in the BBC North
BBC North
BBC North is a brand used by the BBC to mean any of the following.*The large BBC North region, centred on Manchester, that was active from the late 1920s until 1968....
science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
. The part eventually went to Craig Charles
Craig Charles
Craig Joseph Charles is an English actor, stand-up comedian, author, poet, radio and television presenter, best known for playing Dave Lister in the British cult-favourite science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf...
but Bathurst was given a role in the first episode of the series as Frank Todhunter, who is killed in the first ten minutes. Ten years later, Bathurst was invited to reprise the role when a storyline in the series allowed former characters to return, but filming commitments prevented him from appearing. In 1989, he appeared in Malcolm Bradbury
Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
's Anything More Would Be Greedy for Anglia Television
Anglia Television
Anglia Television is the ITV franchise holder for the East Anglia franchise region. Although Anglia Television takes its name from East Anglia, its transmission coverage extends beyond the generally accepted boundaries of that region. The station is based at Anglia House in Norwich, with regional...
, playing Dennis Medlam, MP. The programme was broadcast in 1990 to little fanfare. In 1990, he performed on Up Yer News, a live topical programme broadcast on BSB
British Satellite Broadcasting
British Satellite Broadcasting was a British television company which provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom...
.
Joking Apart
Joking Apart
Joking Apart is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat about the rise and fall of a relationship. It juxtaposes a couple, Mark and Becky , who fall in love and marry, before getting separated and finally divorced...
. Earlier in the day, he noticed a fellow Up Yer News performer reading the script to prepare for his own audition. As Bathurst went into the audition room, his colleague was leaving, and told Bathurst he would "break his legs" if he got the part, a threat that seemed not to be "entirely jocular". Bathurst got the part, and the pilot of Joking Apart was broadcast as an installment of the BBC 2 Comic Asides strand. It returned for two series in 1993 and 1995. Bathurst appeared as sitcom writer Mark Taylor in the series. After the first series was broadcast, a critic called Bathurst the "Best Comedy Newcomer of 1993".
The show was punctuated by fantasy sequences in which his character performed his thoughts as a stand-up routine in a small club. In the commentary and the interview on the DVD, Bathurst says that he was told that they would be reshot after filming everything else, an idea abandoned because of the expense. He has an idea of refilming the sequences 'now', as his older self, to give them a more retrospective feeling. He has also said that he believes Mark was too "designery" and wishes that he had "roughened him up a bit". The role is his favourite of his whole career; he has described it as "the most enjoyable job I will ever do" and considers several episodes of the series to be "timeless, beautifully constructed farces which will endure". Bathurst is often recognised for his appearance in this series, mentioning that "Drunks stop me on public transport and tell me details of the plot of their favourite episode". As punishment for arriving late for the series one press launch at the Café Royal
Café Royal
The Café Royal was a restaurant and meeting place on 68 Regent Street in London's Piccadilly.-History:The establishment was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with...
in Regent Street
Regent Street
Regent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations...
, London, writer Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
pledged to write an episode in which Mark is naked throughout. To a large extent, this vow is realised in the second series.
Between 1991 and 1995, Bathurst also appeared on television in No Job for a Lady
No Job for a Lady
No Job for a Lady is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1990 to 1992. Starring Penelope Keith, it was written by Alex Shearer, and directed and produced by John Howard Davies...
, The House of Eliott
The House of Eliott
The House of Eliott is a British television series produced and broadcast by the BBC in three series between 1991 and 1994. The series starred Stella Gonet and Louise Lombard as two sisters in 1920s London who establish a dressmaking business and eventually their own haute couture fashion house...
and The Detectives
The Detectives
The Detectives is a British comedy television series, starring Jasper Carrott, Robert Powell, and George Sewell. It was a spoof of police dramas, which were numerous in the 1990s, and it was aired on BBC One...
, and on stage in The Choice, Getting Married
Getting Married
Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirises the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalising divorce laws.- External...
and The Nose
The Nose
"The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol. Written between 1835 and 1836, it tells of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.-Part one:...
. He also filmed a role in The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
(Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
, 1996) as St John Weasel.
Wider recognition
In 1996, while appearing in The RoverThe Rover (play)
The Rover or The Banish'd Cavaliers is a play in two parts written by the English author Aphra Behn.Having famously worked as a spy for Charles II against the Dutch, Behn's meager incomes was lost when the king refused to pay her expenses. She turned to writing for an income.The Rover premiered...
at the Salisbury Playhouse, Bathurst got an audition for the Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
comedy pilot Cold Feet
Pilot (Cold Feet)
Cold Feet is a British television pilot directed by Declan Lowney. It stars James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale as Adam and Rachel, a couple who meet and fall in love, only for the relationship to break down when he gets cold feet. John Thomson, Fay Ripley, Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst appear...
. He arrived for the audition "bearded and shaggy", on account of his role in the play, and did not expect to win the role of upper-middle-class management consultant David Marsden. The role in the pilot was only minor, and created at the last minute to support characters played by James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt is a Northern Irish actor. Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Nesbitt grew up in the nearby village of Broughshane, before moving to Coleraine, County Londonderry. He wanted to become a teacher like his father, so he began a degree in French at the University of Ulster...
and Helen Baxendale
Helen Baxendale
Helen Victoria Baxendale is an English actress of stage and television, possibly best-known for her roles in Cold Feet, Friends and Cardiac Arrest.-Early life:...
; the only character note in the script about David related to his high salary. Bathurst identified the character as merely a "post-Thatcherite whipping boy".
Bathurst reprised the role in the Cold Feet
Cold Feet
Cold Feet is a British comedy-drama television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network. The series was created and principally written by Mike Bullen as a follow-up to his award-winning 1997 Comedy Premiere of the same name. The storyline follows three couples experiencing the...
series, which ran for five years from 1998 to 2003. He described the character of David as an "emotional cripple", originally with little depth. The third series features an affair between David and a political activist played by Yasmin Bannerman
Yasmin Bannerman
Yasmin Bannerman is an English actress. Bannerman was born and brought up in Gloucestershire and attended the Rose Bruford College in London until 1993...
. Bathurst appreciated the opportunity to bring some depth a previously one-dimensional character but was more impressed with the storylines that came out of the affair, rather than the affair itself: "It was the deception, the guilt and the recrimination rather than the actual affair, which was neither interesting nor remarkable". Like other cast members, Bathurst was able to suggest storylines as the series went on; one episode features David celebrating his fortieth birthday and Bathurst suggested the character could get a Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...
motorbike. Granada paid for him to take motorcycle lessons and a test. On the day before his test, the filming of a scene where David takes off on his new bike was scheduled. Bathurst "wobbled, missed the camera and crashed into the pavement" leading director Simon Delaney
Simon Delaney
Simon Delaney is an Irish television and theatre director, whose works include the RTE series Bachelors Walk as one of three bachelors living together in a flat on the quays in Dublin....
to exclaim it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. In another episode, David buys a racehorse—ostensibly as a birthday present for his wife—in a plot borne out of Bathurst's own love of horseracing. The role made him more widely recognisable and he often received prospective scripts that were "obvious rewrites of the character". He turned them down, preferring to play a "good person", which would be more interesting from a dramatic point of view.
Between 1998 and 2003, he made television appearances in Goodbye, Mr Steadman (2001), starring opposite Caroline Quentin
Caroline Quentin
Caroline Jones known by her stage name Caroline Quentin, is an English actress. Quentin became known for her television appearances in Men Behaving Badly, playing Dorothy, and playing Maddy Magellan in Jonathan Creek for three years.-Early life:...
as a headmaster who has been declared dead after one of his pupils erases all computer records relating to him, and the adaptation of White Teeth
White Teeth
White Teeth is a 2000 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones, and their families in London...
(2002). On stage he appeared in Michael Frayn's Alarms and Excursions in 1998 and in 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...
in 1999, his last theatre role for several years. In The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, Charles Spencer
Charles Spencer (journalist)
Charles Spencer is a British journalist. He has been the drama critic of The Daily Telegraph since 1991. In 2006, Compton Miller of The Independent wrote in a profile: "This convivial ex-alcoholic is best remembered for his description of Nicole Kidman's nude scene in The Blue Room as 'pure...
described his role as Tesman as a "weird casting choice" but called his acting "a brave stab". In 2001, Bathurst appeared in the music video for Westlife
Westlife
Westlife are an Irish boy band established on 3 July 1998. They are to disband in 2012. The group's line-up was Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan, Mark Feehily, Shane Filan, and Brian McFadden . The group are the only act in British and Irish history to have their first seven singles peak at number one...
's Comic Relief
Comic Relief
Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry in response to famine in Ethiopia. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, a biennial telethon held in March, alternating with sister project Sport Relief...
single "Uptown Girl".
In 2002, straight after finishing Cold Feet, Bathurst went straight into filming 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...
, a series in which he portrays fictional British prime minister Michael Philips. The first series was broadcast in a Sunday afternoon CBBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
slot in 2003. He watched debates in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
to prepare for the role but did not base his portrayal on Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. In 2003, he returned to theatre for the first time in four years to play Vershinin in The Three Sisters, opposite Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....
and Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes, CBE is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Peter...
. He had not seen The Three Sisters before starring in it. Director Michael Blakemore
Michael Blakemore
Michael Howell Blakemore OBE is an Australian actor, writer and theatre director. In 2000 he became the only individual to win Tony Awards for best Director of a Play and Musical in the same year for Copenhagen and Kiss Me, Kate....
advised him to turn this to his advantage, as he would not feel he had to live up to previous portrayals. After its run concluded, a special edition of The Three Sisters was filmed with the same cast for television broadcast on BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
. In 2005, the second series of My Dad's the Prime Minister was broadcast, now moved to a Friday night timeslot to take advantage of the adult humour. The same year, he starred in the ITV thriller The Stepfather playing Christopher Veazey, a man whose daughter goes missing. Bathurst was pleased that this white-collar worker had an emotional side, in comparison to David Marsden, whom he used as a yardstick when accepting those sorts of roles. Also in 2005, he played Mr Sesseman in an adaptation of Heidi
Heidi
Heidi is a Swiss work of fiction, published in two parts as Heidi's years of learning and travel and Heidi makes use of what she has learned.It is a novel about the events in the life of a young girl in her grandfather's care, in the Swiss Alps...
and Dottore Massimo in The Thief Lord
The Thief Lord (film)
The Thief Lord is a 2006 British-German family film directed by Richard Claus. It is a joint production of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., Future Films Limited, Comet Film, and Thema Production. The film is distributed by Warner Brothers...
.
2006–present
In 2006, he played Mark ThatcherMark Thatcher
Sir Mark Thatcher, 2nd Baronet is the son of Sir Denis Thatcher and Baroness Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, and twin brother of Carol Thatcher...
in Coup!, a dramatisation of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea
2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt
The 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt, also known as the Wonga coup, was an alleged coup attempt against the government of Equatorial Guinea in order to replace President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo with exiled opposition politician Severo Moto, carried out by mercenaries and organised...
. He also starred as Adrien opposite Nicholas Tennant in the UK premiere of Members Only at the Trafalgar Studios
Trafalgar Studios
Trafalgar Studios, formerly The Whitehall Theatre until 2004, is a West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London....
. He accepted the part because it was "funny, plausible, plausibly absurd, and cruel" and he liked that it was a translation from an original French play. He enjoyed working on it, telling What's on Stage, "Nick is a really good actor and really good to work with in that you can have completely frank discussions about tiny issues and it's totally ego-free. We're all just discussing the point and not playing games with each other. It does make the working practice easier. If there's only two of you in a play, you are equally responsible—there's nobody else to blame if it goes wrong. So its a greater risk and there's no hiding." At the end of the year, he appeared opposite Richard Wilson in Whipping it Up, a play about whips in a fictional David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
government. To research his role, he watched more Commons debates.
After a season at the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...
at the end of 2006, Whipping it Up transferred to the New Ambassadors Theatre
New Ambassadors Theatre
The Ambassadors Theatre , is a West End theatre located in West Street, near Cambridge Circus on the Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster...
from March to June 2007, then went on a national tour from September to November 2007. The tour coincided with his appearance as the titular character in Alex, based on the comic in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
. The play ran at the Arts Theatre
Arts Theatre
The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...
between October and November 2007 and featured Bathurst interacting with other characters that are projected onto a screen behind him. He was attracted to the role because of the "duplicity and guile" Alex uses to get himself out of tight situations. The role won him a nomination for Best Solo Performance at the What's on Stage Awards. He reprised the role in an international tour from September to November 2008. 2007 also saw Bathurst perform as linguistician Charles in the first series of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Hut 33
Hut 33
Hut 33 is a BBC Radio 4 sitcom set at Bletchley Park in 1941. It includes both the writer and producer from Think the Unthinkable and Concrete Cow.-Production:...
. He reprised the role for two more series in 2008 and 2009.
In 2009, he made his third and final appearance as art dealer James Garrett in My Family. He also played the role of Mr Weston in the BBC costume drama Emma
Emma (2009 TV serial)
Emma is a four-part BBC television drama serial adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Emma, first published in 1815. The episodes were written by Sandy Welch, acclaimed writer of previous BBC costume-dramas Jane Eyre and North and South, and directed by Jim O'Hanlon...
, which was broadcast on BBC One through October 2009. He previously played Weston in a two-part adaptation of Emma for BBC Radio 4 in 2000. Between January and April 2010, Bathurst starred as Garry Essendine in a national touring revival of Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's 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...
. He had not seen Present Laughter before, though had seen several Coward plays in his 20s, and did not imitate Coward's speech patterns while performing. Present Laughter was the first time Bathurst had appeared in a Coward play, and he was cast in another, Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
, later in the year. He plays Charles Condomine opposite Alison Steadman
Alison Steadman
Alison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective,...
and his Cold Feet co-star Hermione Norris
Hermione Norris
Hermione Norris is an English actress.Norris attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in the 1980s before taking small roles in theatre and on television. In 1996, she was cast in her breakout role of Karen Marsden in the comedy drama television series Cold Feet...
. The played toured theatres around southern England in 2010 and early 2011 before beginning a three-month run at the Apollo Theatre
Apollo Theatre
The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...
in London.
On television in 2010, Bathurst starred as Percy Hamleigh in the German-Canadian miniseries The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth (TV miniseries)
The Pillars of the Earth is an eight part 2010 TV miniseries, adapted from Ken Follett's novel of the same name. It debuted in the U.S. on Starz and Canada on The Movie Network/Movie Central on July 23, 2010. Its UK premiere was on Channel 4 in October 2010 at 9pm...
and had a recurring role as widower Sir Anthony Strallan in the period drama Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey is a British television period drama series, produced by NBC Universal-owned British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network. The series is set during the late Edwardian era and the First World War on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, and features an...
. In 2011 he starred as 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 Hattie Jacques
Hattie Jacques
Josephine Edwina Jaques was an English comedy actress, known as Hattie Jacques.Starting her career in the 1940s, Jacques first gained attention through her radio appearances with Tommy Handley on ITMA and later with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour...
biopic Hattie
Hattie (television film)
Hattie is a television film on the life of the British comic actress Hattie Jacques, played by Ruth Jones, her marriage to John Le Mesurier and her affair with their lodger John Schofield...
, and joined the cast of the long-running ITV drama Wild at Heart
Wild at Heart (TV series)
Wild at Heart is a current ITV television drama series about a Bristol-based vet and his family emigrating to start a game park in South Africa. The show premiered in January 2006 and has recently finished screening its sixth series...
. He is due to reunite with his Joking Apart co-star Fiona Gillies for the independent feature film City Slacker, which is scheduled to begin filming in 2011.
Personal life
Bathurst met artist Victoria Threlfall through mutual friends and they married in 1985. They have four daughters: Matilda, Clemency, Oriel, and Honor.Filmography and bibliography
Written works- Bathurst, Robert (4 December 2001). "Yes, Cold Feet beat Trollope, but at what cost?". The Daily TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
: p. 17. - Bathurst, Robert (25 October 2008). "Alex tour: Getting Brezhnev to smile would have been easier". The Daily TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
: p. 26 (Review section)
External links
- Official website
- Robert Bathurst at the British Film InstituteBritish Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...