Toby Stephens
Encyclopedia
Toby Stephens is an English
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...

 stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, television and film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 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...

 who has appeared in films in both Hollywood and Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

. He is best known for playing megavillain Gustav Graves
Gustav Graves
Sir Gustav Graves is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film Die Another Day, played by Toby Stephens...

 in the 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,...

 film Die Another Day
Die Another Day
Die Another Day is the 20th spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth and last film to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond; it is also the last Bond film of the original timeline with the series being rebooted with Casino Royale...

(2002), Edward Fairfax Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (2006 TV serial)
Jane Eyre is a 2006 television adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The story, which has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations is based on the life of the orphaned titular character...

(2006) and Philip Marlowe on the BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 Saturday Play "Classic Chandler" series (2010-11).

Biography

Stephens, the younger son of actors Dame
Dame (title)
The title of Dame is the female equivalent of the honour of knighthood in the British honours system . It is also the equivalent form address to 'Sir' for a knight...

 Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

 and Sir Robert Stephens
Robert Stephens
Sir Robert Stephens was a leading English actor in the early years of England's Royal National Theatre.-Early life and career:...

, was born in London, England. He was educated at Aldro
Aldro
Aldro is a preparatory school in Shackleford, near Godalming, Surrey, England. It caters for about 240 boys between the ages of 7 and 13. The Good Schools Guide called the school an "Extremely popular and successful traditional prep school," also stating "It is a somewhat eccentric world with...

 and Seaford College
Seaford College
Seaford College is an independent co-educational boarding and day-school located at East Lavington, south of Petworth, West Sussex, England. The College was founded in 1884, and is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The college sits in the Lavington Park, in nearly in an...

 and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art is a leading British drama school in west London. LAMDA's president is Timothy West and its new principal is Joanna Read, who recently succeeded Peter James...

 (LAMDA). He began his film career with the role of Othello in 1992's Orlando
Orlando (film)
Orlando is a 1992 film based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, Billy Zane as Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth. It was directed by Sally Potter....

. He has since made regular appearances on television (including in The Camomile Lawn
The Camomile Lawn
The Camomile Lawn is a novel by Mary Wesley about the lives of Richard and Helena Cuthbertson and their five nieces and nephews; Calypso, Walter, Polly, Oliver and Sophy. The title refers to a fragrant camomile lawn stretching down to the Cornish cliffs in the garden of the main characters' aunt's...

) and on stage.

He has gained acclaim as a stage actor of distinction, notably playing the title role in a 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...

 production of Coriolanus
Coriolanus (play)
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...

shortly after graduation from LAMDA; that same season he played Claudio in Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

for the RSC. He also played Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...

 in a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 production of Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

' A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

, and Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

in 2004. He has appeared on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 in Ring Round the Moon. He played the lead in the film Photographing Fairies
Photographing Fairies
Photographing Fairies is 1997 fantasy film based on Steve Szilagyi's 1992 novel Photographing Fairies.- Themes :This film explores some of the themes of folk religion such as: possession, paganism, animism, hallucinogens, parapsychology and fairy...

and played Orsino in 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 film of Twelfth Night. In 2002 he took on the role for which he is most widely known, that of Gustav Graves
Gustav Graves
Sir Gustav Graves is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film Die Another Day, played by Toby Stephens...

 in the 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,...

 movie Die Another Day
Die Another Day
Die Another Day is the 20th spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth and last film to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond; it is also the last Bond film of the original timeline with the series being rebooted with Casino Royale...

.

In 2005 he played the role of a British army captain in the Indian film, Mangal Pandey: The Rising
Mangal Pandey: The Rising
Mangal Pandey: The Rising or The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey is an Indian movie based on the life of Mangal Pandey, an Indian soldier who is known for his role in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It is directed by Ketan Mehta, produced by Bobby Bedi, and with a screenplay by Farrukh Dhondy...

, portraying events in the Indian rebellion of 1857
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...

. The following year he returned to India to play a renegade British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 officer in Sharpe's Challenge
Sharpe's Challenge
Sharpe's Challenge is a British television drama, part of a series that follows the career of Richard Sharpe . Here, the former British soldier undertakes his last mission for his former commander, the Duke of Wellington.-Plot:In 1803 India, Sergeant Sharpe leads a patrol to an East India Company...

.

In late 2006 he starred as Edward Rochester in the 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...

 television adaptation of Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (2006 TV serial)
Jane Eyre is a 2006 television adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The story, which has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations is based on the life of the orphaned titular character...

(broadcast in the United States on PBS in early 2007) and The Wild West in February 2007 for the 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...

 in which he played General George Armstrong Custer in Custer's Last Stand.

During mid-2007, Stephens played the role of Jerry in a revival of Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

's Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...

under the direction of Roger Michell
Roger Michell
Roger Michell is an English theatre, television and film director.-Personal life:He was born in Pretoria, South Africa but spent significant parts of his childhood in Beirut, Damascus and Prague as his father was a diplomat. He was educated at Clifton College where he became a member of Brown's...

. Later that year, Stephens also starred as Horner in Jonathan Kent
Jonathan Kent (director)
Jonathan Kent is an English theatre director and opera director. He is best known as a director/producer partner of Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.-Early life:...

's revival of William Wycherley
William Wycherley
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...

's The Country Wife
The Country Wife
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun...

. The play was the inaugural production of The Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, which in addition to Stephens includes the actors Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins
Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

, Patricia Hodge
Patricia Hodge
Patricia Ann Hodge is an English actor.-Early life:The daughter of the Royal Hotel owner/manager Eric and his wife Marion , Hodge attended Wintringham Girls' Grammar School on Weelsby Avenue in Grimsby and then St...

, David Haig
David Haig
David Haig is an Olivier Award-winning English actor and FIPA Award-winning writer. He is known for his versatility, having played dramatic, serio-comic and comedic roles, playing characters of varied social classes...

 and Ruthie Henshall
Ruthie Henshall
Valentine Ruth Henshall , better known as Ruthie Henshall, is an English singer, dancer, and actress best known for her work in musical theatre. Henshall attended the Laine Theatre Arts school in Epsom, Surrey before making her first professional appearance on stage in 1986...

. Various members of the Company are expected to star in upcoming productions 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...

 with various artistic directors. The formation of the Company is considered by many London theatre critics to be a bold move for West End theatre
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

.

In February 2008, Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 gave the go-ahead to cast Stephens as the lead in a potential one hour, prime time
Prime time
Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...

 U.S. television show, Inseparable, to be produced by Shaun Cassidy
Shaun Cassidy
Shaun Paul Cassidy is an American actor, singer, writer, and producer. He is the eldest son of Academy Award winning actress Shirley Jones, and the second son of Tony award-winning actor Jack Cassidy...

. Billed as a modern Jekyll and Hyde story, the show was to feature a partially paralyzed forensic psychologist whose other personality is a charming criminal. Stephens' casting was highly unusual, because Fox had not yet approved a script nor purchased a pilot for the show. However, in mid-May 2008, The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

 announced that "[b]y the time the network picked up the pilot . . . [the producers'] hold on Stephens had expired . . . ."

In May 2008, Stephens performed the role 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,...

 in a BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 production of Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

's Dr. No, as part of the centenary celebration of Fleming's birth. The production was reportedly the first BBC radio dramatization of the novel though Moonraker was on South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n radio in 1956, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond.

Also in May 2008, Stock-pot Productions announced that Stephens will have the lead role in a feature-length film entitled Fly Me, co-starring Tim McInnerny
Tim McInnerny
Tim McInnerny is an English actor. He is known for his role as Percy in Blackadder and Blackadder II, and as Captain Darling in Blackadder Goes Forth...

. Stock-pot was also the producer of One Day, a short 2006 film shown at international film festivals, in which Stephens played a small part as the boss of McInnerny's character.

On 5 October 2008, Stephens appeared onstage at the London Palladium
London Palladium
The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in London and the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety...

 as part of a benefit entitled "The Story 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,...

, A Tribute to Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

." The event, organized by Fleming's niece, Lucy Fleming
Lucy Fleming
Lucy Fleming is a British actress.She is the daughter of the actress Celia Johnson and writer Peter Fleming, as well as the niece of James Bond author Ian Fleming...

, featured music from various James Bond films and Bond film stars reading from Fleming's Bond novels. Stephens took the part of James Bond himself in the readings.

In early December 2008, Stephens read from Coda, the last book written by his good friend 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...

, for BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

. The excerpts from which Stephens read included Gray's description of Gray's participation as godfather at the christening of Stephens' son Eli.

Early in 2009, Stephens appeared as Prince John in Season 3 of the 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...

 series Robin Hood. The series also aired on BBC America
BBC America
BBC America is an American television network, owned and operated by BBC Worldwide, and available on both cable and satellite.-History:The channel launched on March 29, 1998, broadcasting comedy, drama and lifestyle programs from BBC Television and other British television broadcasters like ITV and...

 in the United States. Stephens' more recent television appearances include two episodes of a six-part television series, Strike Back
Strike Back (TV series)
Chris Ryan's Strike Back is a six-part British television series based on the novel of the same name written by best-selling author and former soldier of the Special Air Service, Chris Ryan. It was produced by Left Bank Pictures for Sky1...

, based on the novel by Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan
Sergeant ‘Chris Ryan’ MM is the pseudonym of a former British Special Forces operative and soldier turned novelist...

. The series aired in May 2010.

In the summer of 2009, Stephens returned to the London stage in the Donmar Warehouse
Donmar Warehouse
Donmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of London, with a capacity of 251.-About:Under the artistic leadership of Michael Grandage, the theatre has presented some of London’s most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical...

 production of Ibsen's A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

alongside Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...

 and Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...

.

In 2010, Stephens once again performed on television. First, he starred in the made-for-television movie, The Blue Geranium, a further sequel to the television series and movies based on Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

's Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...

 character. The show was broadcast in the U.S. on PBS in June 2010, and is expected to finally air in Britain later this year. Stephens also recently starred as a highly self-centered detective opposite Lucy Punch
Lucy Punch
Lucy Punch is an English actress. Her credits include the television shows Doc Martin and The Class, and the films Hot Fuzz and Bad Teacher.-Life and career:...

 in a three-part comedic television series for BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 entitled Vexed
Vexed (TV series)
Vexed is a comedy-drama, police procedural television series for BBC Two. Created and written by Howard Overman, the series stars Lucy Punch as D.I. Kate Bishop and Toby Stephens as D.I. Jack Armstrong, a detective duo with a fractious relationship. Jack is lazy and disorganised but charming...

.

Stephens also took on a small supporting role in a short film, The Lost Explorer, the directorial debut of photographer Tim Walker
Tim Walker
Timothy "Tim" Walker is a British fashion photographer.Tim Walker’s photographs have appeared in Vogue, month by month, for over a decade. Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his style...

. The film is based on a short story by author Patrick McGrath.

Meantime, on the London stage in the spring of 2010, Stephens received outstanding reviews for his performance as Henry in a revival of Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

's The Real Thing
The Real Thing (play)
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....

, directed by Anna Mackmin
Anna Mackmin
Anna Mackmin is an award-winning British theatre director. She has been an associate director at the Sheffield Crucible and at the Gate Theatre in London.-Life and career:...

 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...

 Theatre in London. Of debuting at the Old Vic, where his parents performed as part of Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

's 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...

 company, Stephens said: "It's quite moving for me to do something there. It means it has an added fascination. It was an historic place but I never saw anything when [my parents] were there, which is really sad, because I was just born. I'm a huge admirer of Stoppard's work."

Stephens' most recent stage role, performed in the summer and fall of 2010, was Georges Danton
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and the...

 in Danton's Death
Danton's Death
Danton's Death was the first play written by Georg Büchner, set during the French Revolution.-History:Georg Büchner wrote his works in the period between Romanticism and Realism in the so-called Vormärz era in German history and literature...

. The play was another debut for Stephens, this time at London's 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...

.

Over the years, Stephens has continued to prolifically narrate audiobooks and perform in broadcast radio dramas; in the last three years, he has averaged four or five such performances per year. In January 2011, Stephens will join other stars in narrating portions of the King James Version of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 for BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 as part of a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the book's publication. BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 also recently announced that Stephens will be performing the role of Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

's Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 in a radio serial planned schedule to start in February 2011. Stephens has also narrated another audiobook, Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery, also due for release in February 2011.

Personal life

In May 2007, Toby Stephens and his wife of six years, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 actress Anna-Louise Plowman
Anna-Louise Plowman
Anna-Louise Plowman is an actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Consultant Anaesthetist Annalese Carson in Holby City and Dr. Sarah Gardner in Stargate SG-1 who was possessed by the Goa'uld Osiris...

, had their first child, son Eli Alistair. The late 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...

, the renowned British playwright (who penned Japes, a stage play, and Missing Dates, a radio drama, both of which starred Stephens), was reportedly Eli's godfather. Stephens and his wife became the parents of a second child, daughter Tallulah, in May 2009. The couple was expecting a third child in September 2010.

Filmography

Year Title Role Director Other Notes
1992 Orlando
Orlando (film)
Orlando is a 1992 film based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, Billy Zane as Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth. It was directed by Sally Potter....

Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

Sally Potter
Sally Potter
Charlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter.-Career:Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started making experimental short films, including Jerk and Play...

Written by Sally Potter
Sally Potter
Charlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter.-Career:Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started making experimental short films, including Jerk and Play...

, based on the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

1996 Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996 film)
Twelfth Night or What You Will is a 1996 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play, directed by Trevor Nunn and featuring an all-star cast. The adaptation is given a northern Central European feel, set in the late 19th century, with Orsino and his followers shown wearing Czapka...

Duke Orsino 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...

Based on the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night
1997 Sunset Heights Luke Bradley Colm Villa
1997 Photographing Fairies
Photographing Fairies
Photographing Fairies is 1997 fantasy film based on Steve Szilagyi's 1992 novel Photographing Fairies.- Themes :This film explores some of the themes of folk religion such as: possession, paganism, animism, hallucinogens, parapsychology and fairy...

Charles Castle Nick Willing
Nick Willing
Nick Willing is a British director, writer and producer of films and television programs.Willing is the son of Portuguese painter Paula Rego and English artist Victor Willing and was largely brought up in Portugal, but settled in England at the age of 12...

Based on the book by Steve Szilagyi
Steve Szilagyi
Critic, journalist, novelist Steve Szilagyi is the author of Photographing Fairies , and co-author, with Bill Mesce, Jr., of The Advocate ....

1998 Cousin Bette Victorin Hulot Des McAnuff
Des McAnuff
Desmond McAnuff is the Canadian-American artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and director of musical theatre of such Broadway productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.-Biography:...

Based on the book Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

1999 Onegin
Onegin (film)
Onegin is a 1999 British-American romantic drama film based on Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin, co-produced by British and American companies and shot mostly in the United Kingdom...

Vladimir Lensky Martha Fiennes
Martha Fiennes
Martha Fiennes is a British film director, writer and producer. An award-winning director, Fiennes is best-known for her films Onegin and Chromophobia .-Career:...

Based on the poem Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes . It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832...

by Alexander Pushkin
2000 The Announcement Ross Troy Miller
Troy Miller
Troy Miller is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.  Miller is best known for his work in directing.- Stand-up comedy :Miller has produced and/or directed comedy shows and specials for a variety of comics including Robin Williams, Martin Short, Katt Williams, Jim Gaffigan, Brian...

2000 Space Cowboys
Space Cowboys
Space Cowboys is a 2000 science fiction film directed by Clint Eastwood. Eastwood also stars in the film alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner as four older "ex-test pilots" who are sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite...

Frank Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

2001 Possession Fergus Wolfe Neil LaBute
Neil LaBute
Neil N. LaBute is an American film director, screenwriter and playwright.-Early life:LaBute was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Marian, a hospital receptionist, and Richard LaBute, a long-haul truck driver. LaBute is of French Canadian, English and Irish ancestry, and was raised in Spokane,...

Based on the novel Possession: A Romance
Possession: A Romance
Possession: A Romance is a 1990 bestselling novel by British writer A. S. Byatt. It is a winner of the Man Booker Prize.Part historical as well as contemporary fiction, the title Possession refers to issues of ownership and independence between lovers, the practice of collecting historically...

by A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...

2002 Die Another Day
Die Another Day
Die Another Day is the 20th spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth and last film to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond; it is also the last Bond film of the original timeline with the series being rebooted with Casino Royale...

Gustav Graves
Gustav Graves
Sir Gustav Graves is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film Die Another Day, played by Toby Stephens...

Lee Tamahori
Lee Tamahori
Lee Tamahori is a New Zealand filmmaker best known for directing the 1994 film Once Were Warriors and the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day.-Upbringing and early career:...

Based on the characters of Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

2004 Terkel in Trouble
Terkel in Trouble
Terkel in Trouble is a Danish animated film. In the original language all the voices are done by stand-up comedian Anders Matthesen, who also wrote the original story – released on a CD.-Plot summary:...

Voice of Justin Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen, Thorbjørn Christoffersen, Stefan Fjeldmark Animated film
2005 Midsummer Dream
Midsummer Dream
Midsummer Dream is a 2005 computer-animated film from Dygra Films, the creators of The Living Forest. Made in Spain and Portugal, the film is loosely based on William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.-Voice cast:...

Voice of Demetrius Ángel de la Cruz, Manolo Gómez Animated film Based on the play A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

by Shakespeare
2005 Mangal Pandey: The Rising
Mangal Pandey: The Rising
Mangal Pandey: The Rising or The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey is an Indian movie based on the life of Mangal Pandey, an Indian soldier who is known for his role in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It is directed by Ketan Mehta, produced by Bobby Bedi, and with a screenplay by Farrukh Dhondy...

Captain William Gordon Ketan Mehta
Ketan Mehta
Ketan Mehta is an Indian film director, who has also directed documentaries and television serials.-Early life and education:Born in Navsari in Gujarat, Ketan Mehta did his schooling from Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Delhi and later graduated in film direction from Film and Television Institute of...

2006 Dark Corners
Dark Corners
Dark Corners is a 2006 horror-thriller film starring Thora Birch as a woman who can't escape her bad dreams. The line begins to blur between reality and the horror that lives in her mind, making everyone wonder what's really happening.-Cast:...

Dr Woodleigh Ray Gower Written by Ray Gower
2006 Severance
Severance (film)
Severance is a British comedy horror film, written by James Moran, directed by Christopher Smith, and starring Danny Dyer and Laura Harris. In 2009, media interest in the film was revived following the alleged copycat murder of a UK teenager.-Plot:...

Harris Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith (director)
Christopher Smith, is a British film director and screenwriter.- Career :His four most prominent pieces of work are Creep, Severance, Triangle and Black Death. Smith was last working on a movie based about the UK children's book series CHERUB...


Television

Year Title Role Other notes
1992 The Camomile Lawn Oliver Based on the book The Camomile Lawn
The Camomile Lawn
The Camomile Lawn is a novel by Mary Wesley about the lives of Richard and Helena Cuthbertson and their five nieces and nephews; Calypso, Walter, Polly, Oliver and Sophy. The title refers to a fragrant camomile lawn stretching down to the Cornish cliffs in the garden of the main characters' aunt's...

by Mary Wesley
Mary Wesley
Mary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. During her career, she was one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.-Background:...

1996 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996 miniseries)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a 1996 British television serial adaptation of Anne Brontë's novel of the same name, produced by BBC and directed by Mike Barker...

Gilbert Markham Based on the book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by English author Anne Brontë, published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell...

by Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a...

2000 The Great Gatsby Jay Gatsby Based on the book The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....

by F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

2001 Perfect Strangers
Perfect Strangers (BBC TV series)
Perfect Strangers is an acclaimed television drama first aired in 2001, produced for BBC Two. It was written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, and starred Michael Gambon, who won a British Academy Television Award for his performance, Lindsay Duncan, Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Skinner...

Charles
2002 Napoléon
Napoléon (miniseries)
Napoleon is a historical miniseries which explored the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 2002, it was the most expensive television miniseries in Europe, costing the equivalent of $US46,330,000 to produce. The miniseries covered Napoleon's military successes and failures, including the Battles of...

Tsar Alexander I
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

 
Based on the book by Max Gallo
Max Gallo
Max Gallo is a French writer, historian and politician.The son of Italian immigrants, Max Gallo's early career was in journalism. At the time he was a Communist . In 1974, he joined the Socialist Party. On April 26, 2007, the French Academy recorded his candidacy for its Seat 24, formerly held by...

2003 Essential Byron Reader Dramatised documentary focusing on poet Lord Byron's work
2003 Cambridge Spies
Cambridge Spies
Cambridge Spies is a 2003 four-part BBC television drama concerning the lives of the best-known quartet of the Cambridge Five Soviet spies from 1934 to the 1951 defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union...

Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...

 
2003 Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...

Five Little Pigs
Philip Blake Based on the book Five Little Pigs
Five Little Pigs
Five Little Pigs is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in May 1942 under the title of Murder in Retrospect and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in January 1943 although some sources state that publication occurred in November 1942...

by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

2004 London
London (TV series)
London is a 2004 three-part BBC history documentary series about the history of London, presented by Peter Ackroyd.-'Cast list':The series made a visual trope of, as Ackroyd walked around London or was sitting in his study, the persons of famous and anonymous historical figures would fade in and...

Casanova 
2005 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...

Dr Nick Henderson Season 5, Episodes 5 and 6 (Subterraneans, Parts I and II)
2005 The Queen's Sister
The Queen's Sister
The Queen's Sister is a 2005 British television movie directed by Simon Cellan Jones. The teleplay by Craig Warner is a semi-fictionalized account of the life of Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, from 1952 until the mid-1970s. It was produced by Touchpaper Television,...

Anthony Armstrong-Jones 
2006 The Best Man Peter Tremaine
2006 Secrets of the Dead
Secrets of the Dead
Secrets of the Dead is a PBS television series produced by Thirteen/WNET New York. The show generally follows an investigator or team of investigators exploring what modern science can tell us about some of the great mysteries of history...

:The Umbrella Assassin
Narrator Season 5, Episode 5; an account of the murder of Georgi Markov
Georgi Markov
Georgi Ivanov Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer.Markov originally worked as a novelist and playwright, but in 1969 he defected from Bulgaria, then governed by President Todor Zhivkov...

2006 Sharpe's Challenge
Sharpe's Challenge
Sharpe's Challenge is a British television drama, part of a series that follows the career of Richard Sharpe . Here, the former British soldier undertakes his last mission for his former commander, the Duke of Wellington.-Plot:In 1803 India, Sergeant Sharpe leads a patrol to an East India Company...

William Dodd  Based on Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell OBE is an English author of historical novels. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe which were adapted into a series of Sharpe television films.-Biography:...

's Richard Sharpe
Richard Sharpe (fictional character)
Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of Richard Sharpe. The stories formed the basis for an ITV television series wherein the eponymous character was played by Sean Bean....

 series
2006 Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (2006 TV serial)
Jane Eyre is a 2006 television adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The story, which has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations is based on the life of the orphaned titular character...

Edward Fairfax Rochester Based on the book Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...

by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...

2007 The Wild West - Custer's Last Stand General George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...

 
Dramatised documentary
2008 Wired
Wired (UK TV series)
Wired is a 2008 three-part television miniseries starring Jodie Whittaker, Laurence Fox and Toby Stephens. It debuted on ITV at 9:00pm on Monday 13 October, 2008 and was shown over three consecutive Mondays.- Plot summary :...

Crawford Hill Mini-Series
2009 The Best Job In The World
The Best Job In The World
In 2009, Tourism Queensland promoted the Great Barrier Reef as a global tourism destination with a website encouraging people worldwide to apply for The Best Job In The World, to be a "Caretaker of the Islands" to "house-sit" the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for half a year, based on Hamilton...

Narrator Documentary based on Tourism Queensland
Tourism Queensland
Tourism Queensland is the state government agency responsible for the marketing of Queensland tourism destinations and the development of the tourist industry in the state. The agency was established in 1979 as the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation. Tourism Queensland was once part of the...

's publicity stunt for a barrier islands' 'caretaker'
2009 Robin Hood - Series 3 Prince John of England
John of England
John , also known as John Lackland , was King of England from 6 April 1199 until his death...

 
2010 Strike Back
Strike Back (TV series)
Chris Ryan's Strike Back is a six-part British television series based on the novel of the same name written by best-selling author and former soldier of the Special Air Service, Chris Ryan. It was produced by Left Bank Pictures for Sky1...

Arlington Based on the book by Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan
Sergeant ‘Chris Ryan’ MM is the pseudonym of a former British Special Forces operative and soldier turned novelist...

2010 Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447 Narrator Documentary on Air France Flight 447
Air France Flight 447
Air France Flight 447 was a scheduled airline flight from Rio de Janeiro-Galeão to Paris-Roissy involving an Airbus A330-200 aircraft that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 aircrew. The investigation is still ongoing, and the cause of the...

2010 The Blue Geranium George Pritchard A Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...

 mystery based on the Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

 short story (first published in The Thirteen Problems
The Thirteen Problems
The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US...

2010 Vexed
Vexed (TV series)
Vexed is a comedy-drama, police procedural television series for BBC Two. Created and written by Howard Overman, the series stars Lucy Punch as D.I. Kate Bishop and Toby Stephens as D.I. Jack Armstrong, a detective duo with a fractious relationship. Jack is lazy and disorganised but charming...

Jack Armstrong Written by Howard Overman

Theatre

Year Title Role Other notes
1992 Tartuffe
Tartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...

Damis Directed by Sir Peter Hall (Playhouse); play by Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

; Stephens' West End theatre
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 debut
1992 Tamburlaine Celebinus/King of Argier Directed by Terry Hands (RSC); play by Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

1992 Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...

Pompey 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,...

 (RSC); play by Shakespeare
1992 All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....

Bertram Directed by Sir Peter Hall (RSC); play by Shakespeare
1993 Wallenstein Max Piccolomini Directed by Tim Albery
Tim Albery
Tim Bronson Reginald Albery is an English stage director, best known for his productions of opera.-Life and career:Albery was born in Harpenden, the son of the impresario Donald Albery and grandson of the producer Sir Bronson Albery...

 (RSC); play by Friedrich von Schiller
1994 Unfinished Business Young Beamish Directed by Steven Pimlott
Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott OBE was an English opera and theatre director and actor. An obituary in The Times hailed him as "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation"...

 (RSC); play by Michael Hastings
1994 Coriolanus
Coriolanus (play)
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...

Caius Marcius Coriolanus Directed by David Thacker
David Thacker
David Thacker is an English award-winning theatre director.David Thacker is currently the Artistic Director at the Octagon Theatre Bolton...

 (RSC); play by Shakespeare
1994 A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

Lysander Directed by Adrian Noble
Adrian Noble
Adrian Keith Noble is a theatre director, and was also the artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003.-Education and career:...

 (RSC); play by Shakespeare
1994 Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

Claudio Directed by Steven Pimlott
Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott OBE was an English opera and theatre director and actor. An obituary in The Times hailed him as "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation"...

 (RSC); play by Shakespeare
1996 A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...

 
Directed by Sir Peter Hall (The Haymarket); play by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

1998/99 Phedre
Phèdre
Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...

Hippolytus Directed by Jonathan Kent
Jonathan Kent (director)
Jonathan Kent is an English theatre director and opera director. He is best known as a director/producer partner of Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.-Early life:...

 (Almeida & Brooklyn Academy); play by Jean Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

1998/99 Britannicus
Britannicus (play)
Britannicus is a tragic play by the French dramatist Jean Racine.The play, produced in 1669, was the first time Racine had tried his hand at depicting Roman history. The tale of moral choice takes as its subject Britannicus, the son of the Roman emperor Claudius, and heir to the imperial throne...

Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....

 
Directed by Jonathan Kent
Jonathan Kent (director)
Jonathan Kent is an English theatre director and opera director. He is best known as a director/producer partner of Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.-Early life:...

 (Almeida & Brooklyn Academy); play by Jean Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

1999 Ring Round the Moon Hugo/Frederick Directed by Gerry Gutierrez (Lincoln Center Theatre NY); play by Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...

; Stephens' Broadway debut
2001 Japes Japes Directed by Sir Peter Hall (The Haymarket); play by 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...

2001 The Royal Family Anthony Cavendish Directed by Sir Peter Hall (The Haymarket); play by George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...

 and Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...

2004 Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

Hamlet Directed by Michael Boyd (RSC); play by Shakespeare
2004 The Pilate Workshop Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 
Directed by Michael Boyd (RSC); play by Helen Edmundson
Helen Edmundson
Helen Edmundson is a British playwright particularly well-known for her adaptations of various literary classics for the stage.Edmundson's first play Flying was produced at the National Theatre Studio in 1990...

, based on Ann Wroe's Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...

: The Biography of an Invented Man
2007 Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...

Jerry Directed by Roger Michell
Roger Michell
Roger Michell is an English theatre, television and film director.-Personal life:He was born in Pretoria, South Africa but spent significant parts of his childhood in Beirut, Damascus and Prague as his father was a diplomat. He was educated at Clifton College where he became a member of Brown's...

 (Donmar); play by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

2007 The Country Wife
The Country Wife
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun...

Mr. Horner Directed by Jonathan Kent
Jonathan Kent (director)
Jonathan Kent is an English theatre director and opera director. He is best known as a director/producer partner of Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.-Early life:...

 (Haymarket); play by William Wycherley
William Wycherley
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...

2009 A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

Thomas (Torvald, Nora's husband, in the original) Directed by Kfir Yefet (Donmar); play by Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

, adapted by Zinnie Harris
2010 The Real Thing
The Real Thing (play)
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....

 
Henry Directed by Anna Mackmin
Anna Mackmin
Anna Mackmin is an award-winning British theatre director. She has been an associate director at the Sheffield Crucible and at the Gate Theatre in London.-Life and career:...

; play by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

2010 Danton's Death
Danton's Death
Danton's Death was the first play written by Georg Büchner, set during the French Revolution.-History:Georg Büchner wrote his works in the period between Romanticism and Realism in the so-called Vormärz era in German history and literature...

Georges Danton Directed by Michael Grandage
Michael Grandage
Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

; play by Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...


Radio drama and audio books

Year Title Role Other notes
1994 Time and the Conways Robin Radio drama based on the play Time and the Conways
Time and the Conways
Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory Of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937...

by J.B. Priestley: released as a BBC Audiobook in March 2010
1995 The Prince's Choice Coriolanus, Hamlet, Henry V, Henry IV and Edward Poins A selection from Shakespeare's works; narrators include the Prince of Wales and Stephens' parents, Sir Robert Stephens
Robert Stephens
Sir Robert Stephens was a leading English actor in the early years of England's Royal National Theatre.-Early life and career:...

 and Dame Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

, Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books
1997 As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...

Orlando 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...

 dramatised recording of Shakespeare's play
1997 The Lifted Veil
The Lifted Veil
The Lifted Veil is a novella by George Eliot, first published in 1859. Quite unlike the realistic fiction for which Eliot is best known, The Lifted Veil explores themes of extrasensory perception, the essence of physical life, possible life after death, and the power of fate...

Latimer 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...

 dramatised recording of the novella by George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

1997 The Guns of Navarone
The Guns of Navarone (novel)
The Guns of Navarone is a 1957 novel about World War II by Scottish thriller writer Alistair MacLean that was made into a critically acclaimed film in 1961...

Mallory 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...

 two part dramatised recording of the novel by Alistair MacLean
Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers or adventure stories, the best known of which are perhaps The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, all three having been made into successful films...

, BBC Radio Collection Audiobook
1997 Birdsong
Birdsong (novel)
Birdsong is a 1993 war novel by the English author Sebastian Faulks. Faulks' fourth novel, it tells of a man called Stephen Wraysford at different stages of his life both before and during World War I...

Stephen Wraysford 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...

 three-part drama based on the Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks
-Early life:Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire to Peter Faulks and Pamela . Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks, is his older brother. He was educated at Elstree School, Reading and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire...

 novel (sometimes listed under the title of Part I, 'France 1910')
1997 Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...

Count Vronsky 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...

 dramatised recording of the Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 novel, BBC Classic Collection Audiobook
1998 The Troy trilogy
Troy (BBC radio drama)
Troy is a trilogy of radio plays, first broadcast in 1998 on BBC Radio 3. The cast is led by Paul Scofield, who came out of retirement to take part. Troy was written by Andrew Rissik and produced by Jeremy Mortimer...

Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

 
3 x 90 minute plays by Andrew Rissik for the 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...

 with Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...


King Priam and His Sons; The Death of Achilles; Helen at Ephesus
1999 Tales from the Arabian Nights Narrator Includes Aladdin
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....

 and His Magic Lamp, Sinbad
Sinbad
Sinbad or Sindbad may refer to:* Sinbad the Sailor, from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as Arabian Nights* Sinbad the Sailor, an alias of Edmond Dantes in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo...

 and Ali Baba
Ali Baba
Ali Baba is a fictional character from medieval Arabic literature. He is described in the adventure tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves...

 and the Forty Thieves, Naxos Audiobooks
1999 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...

Macbeth Voice of Macbeth for the Movingstage Marionette Company
Puppet Theatre Barge
The Puppet Theatre Barge is a unique, fifty-seat marionette theatre on a converted barge in London. The theatre presents puppet shows for children and adults and is moored in Little Venice throughout the year and in Richmond-upon-Thames during the summer....

's production of the Shakespeare play
2000 Conversations with Napoleon Reader The words of Napoleon Bonaparte
2001 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...

Edmund Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...

 is 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...

 in a dramatised reading of Shakespeare's play, Naxos Audiobooks
2001 On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...

Narrator 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...

 radio reading of the Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

 book
2002 The Riddle of the Sands
The Riddle of the Sands
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. It is an early example of the espionage novel, with a strong underlying theme of militarism...

Narrator Novel by Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...

, Penguin Audiobooks
2002 The Woman in White
The Woman in White (novel)
The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859–1860, and first published in book form in 1860...

Walter Hartright 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...

 dramatised recording of novel by Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...

, BBC Radio Collection Audiobook
2002 Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

 
Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

's Classical Poem abridged by James Burbidge with Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...

, Naxos Audiobooks
2003 Dionysos Pentheus, King of Thebes 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...

 radio drama by Andrew Rissik with Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...

2004 Will in the World Reader Based on Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar.Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term...

's book, a reconstruction of Shakespeare's life & era
2005 Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

Benedick BBC dramatised recording of Shakespeare's play
2006 Shylock Bassanio BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

 dramatised recording of play by Sir Arnold Wesker
Arnold Wesker
Sir Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama. He is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings...

2007 Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...

Narrator Novel by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

, Silksoundbooks Audiobook
2007 Flashman on the March
Flashman on the March
Flashman on the March is a 2005 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the twelfth and last Flashman novel.-Plot introduction:As in all of Fraser's Flashman novels, the story is presented as part of the Flashman Papers, supposedly written by Sir Harry Flashman, the villain of Tom Brown's Schooldays...

Narrator Novel by George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser, OBE was an English-born author of Scottish descent, who wrote both historical novels and non-fiction books, as well as several screenplays.-Early life and military career:...

, HarperCollins Audiobook
2008 Flashman and the Dragon
Flashman and the Dragon
Flashman and the Dragon is a 1985 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the eighth of the Flashman novels.-Plot introduction:Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, this book describes the bully Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays...

Narrator Novel by George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser, OBE was an English-born author of Scottish descent, who wrote both historical novels and non-fiction books, as well as several screenplays.-Early life and military career:...

, HarperCollins Audiobook
2008 Missing Dates Jason (Japes) BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of play by 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...

 (a reworking of his play Japes, in which Stephens also played the title role, see Theatre above)
2008 The Good Soldier
The Good Soldier
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends...

Narrator BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 Book at Bedtime
Book at Bedtime
Book at Bedtime is a long-running radio programme on BBC Radio 4, broadcast each weekday evening at 10.45–11.00 pm.Book at Bedtime offers fiction including modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world. Books are usually abridged and serialised each evening for...

 reading of the novel by Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...

2008 Dr. No 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,...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of novel by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

2008 Let's Murder Vivaldi Ben BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 The Saturday Play, adaptation of David Mercer's television drama
2008 Coda Simon Gray BBC Radio 4 reading of 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 autobiographical book
2008–2009 The Dark Flower Narrator BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 Book at Bedtime
Book at Bedtime
Book at Bedtime is a long-running radio programme on BBC Radio 4, broadcast each weekday evening at 10.45–11.00 pm.Book at Bedtime offers fiction including modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world. Books are usually abridged and serialised each evening for...

 featuring the novel by John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...

2009 My Dark Places James Ellroy BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...

 radio drama based on the autobiographical book by James Ellroy
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a so-called "telegraphic" prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black...

2009 Journey Into Space: The Host Jet BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 The Saturday Play, written by Julian Simpson
Julian Simpson
Julian Simpson is a London-based writer and director working in film, TV and radio. He was educated at Felsted School.His credits include The Criminal, Superstorm, Murder Prevention, Spooks, New Tricks, Hustle and Doctor Who....

, based on BBC Radio show Journey Into Space
Journey Into Space
Journey Into Space is a BBC Radio science fiction programme, written by BBC producer Charles Chilton. It was the last radio programme in the UK to attract a bigger evening audience than television...

 by Charles Chilton
Charles Chilton
Charles Chilton MBE is a BBC radio presenter, a writer and a producer. Born in Bloomsbury in London, England, he never knew his father - who was killed during World War I - and when he was six his mother died as a result of having a botched abortion, so he was raised by his grandmother. He was...

 (to be released as an audiobook, April 2010)
2009 King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...

Narrator Novel by H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...

, BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...

 Audiobook
2009 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...

King Henry II BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

 adaptation of Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...

's play
2010 Dick Barton Special Agent: The Mystery of the Missing Formula Narrator Novel by Mike Dorrell, based on the character Dick Barton
Dick Barton
Dick Barton - Special Agent was a popular radio programme on the BBC Light Programme. Between 1946 to 1951 it aired at 6.45 each weekday evening and at its peak it had an audience of 15 million listeners. Despite popular belief, it was not actually the BBC's first daily serial...

 of the BBC Light Programme
BBC Light Programme
The Light Programme was a BBC radio station which broadcast mainstream light entertainment and music from 1945 until 1967, when it was rebranded as BBC Radio 2...

 of the 1940s; 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...

 Audiobook
2010 Goldfinger 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,...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of novel by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

2010 No Place Like Home Jonathan BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 Afternoon Play
Afternoon Play
The Afternoon Play is a long-running drama programming strand, broadcast every weekday at 2.15pm on BBC Radio 4. Each play lasts for 45 minutes, and roughly 190 new Afternoon Plays are broadcast each year....

 by Robert Rigby
Robert Rigby
Robert Rigby is a musician, playwright and author.Rigby began his career as a journalist, then spent several years in the music business as a songwriter and session musician. In 1978 independent label Flight released a single by Robert and the Following year Fusion Records released Robert's "Let...

 and Nick Russell-Pavier
2011 King James Version of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

Narrator BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 celebration of the 400th anniversary of publication of the KJV
2011 Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery Narrator Novel by Francis Durbridge
Francis Durbridge
Francis Henry Durbridge was an English playwright and author. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire where he was encouraged to write by his English teacher. He continued to do so whilst studying English at Birmingham University...

; 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...

 Audiobook
2011 The Lady in the Lake
The Lady in the Lake
The Lady in the Lake is a 1943 detective novel by Raymond Chandler featuring, as do all his major works, the Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe.-Introduction:...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 Farewell, My Lovely
Farewell, My Lovely
Farewell, My Lovely is a 1940 novel by Raymond Chandler, the second novel he wrote featuring Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times.-Plot summary:...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 Playback (novel)
Playback (novel)
Playback is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death.-Plot summary:This novel puts Marlowe in the position of turning against his client...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 Carte Blanche
Carte Blanche (novel)
Carte Blanche is a James Bond novel written by Jeffery Deaver. Commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications, it was published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton on 26 May 2011 and was released in the United States by Simon & Schuster on 14 June 2011...

Narrator Novel by Jeffrey Deaver; Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...

 Audiobooks
2011 The Long Goodbye (novel)
The Long Goodbye (novel)
The Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 The High Window
The High Window
The High Window is a 1942 novel written by Raymond Chandler. It is his third novel to feature Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe.-Plot introduction:...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatisation of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 The Little Sister
The Little Sister
The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, the fifth in his popular Philip Marlowe series. The story is set in late 1940s Los Angeles.-Plot summary:...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatization of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

2011 Poodle Springs
Poodle Springs
Poodle Springs is the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. It was started in 1958 by Raymond Chandler, who left it unfinished at his death in 1959. The four chapters he had completed, which bore the working title "The Poodle Springs Story", were subsequently published in Raymond Chandler Speaking , a...

Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

 
BBC Radio 4
BBC 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...

 dramatizarion of the novel by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

 and Robert B. Parker
Robert B. Parker
Robert Brown Parker was an American crime writer. His most famous works were the novels about the private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the late 1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character were also...


Awards

  • 1994—Ian Charleson Award (best classical actor under 30): Coriolanus
  • 1994—Sir John Gielgud Award (best actor): Coriolanus
  • 1999—Theatre World Award (debut performance on Broadway): Ring Round the Moon

Interviews and articles


External links

  • RSC Hamlet website Includes clips of Toby Stephens and the cast rehearsing the 2004 production of Hamlet.
  • http://unitedagents.co.uk/toby-stephens
  • http://www.hobsons-international.com/voices/1595/toby_stephens
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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