Simon Callow

Simon Phillip Hugh Callow CBE born 15 June 1949 is an English actor Known as a character actor on stage and screen he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999 Callow rose to prominence originating the title role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1979 Peter Shaffer play Amadeus for which he received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination Callow joined the Miloš Forman 1984 film adaptation this time portraying Emanuel Schikaneder In 1992 Callow won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Musical for Carmen Jones As an actor he won acclaim for his comedic roles in A Room with a View 1985 and Four Weddings and a Funeral 1994 earning a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination for each Other notable roles include in Maurice 1987 Howards End 1992 Shakespeare in Love 1998 and The Phantom of the Opera 2004 His television roles include Tom Chance in the Channel 4 series Chance in a Million 1984 and The Duke of Sandringham in the series Outlander from 2014 to 2016 He portrayed Napoleon in The Man of Destiny 1981 and Charles Dickens in numerous television projects He has also appeared on numerous shows such as Midsomer Murders Rome Angels in America Doctor Who Galavant Hawkeye and The Witcher Callow was born on 15 June 1949 in Streatham South London the son of Yvonne Mary née Guise a secretary and Neil Francis Callow a businessman His father was of French descent and his mother was of Danish and German ancestry His father left when Simon was 18 months old and he was brought up by his mother and grandmothers He and his mother travelled to Northern Rhodesia now called Zambia when he was nine to try and reconcile with his father This did not happen and Callow was sent for three years to boarding school in South Africa He and his mother returned to Britain when he was twelve He was raised as a Catholic Callow was a student at the London Oratory School in West Brompton and then went on to study briefly at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland where he was active in the gay liberation movement5 He gave up his degree course after a year to take a threeyear acting course at the Drama Centre London He made his first film appearance in 1984 as Schikaneder in Amadeus The following year he appeared as the Reverend Mr Beebe in A Room with a View His first television role was in the Carry On Laughing episode Orgy and Bess in 1975 but it was cut from the final print He starred in several series of the Channel 4 situation comedy Chance in a Million as Tom Chance an eccentric individual to whom coincidences happened regularly Roles like this and his part in Four Weddings and a Funeral brought him to a wider audience Callow portrayed Pliny the Elder in CBBCs 2007 childrens drama series Roman Mysteries in the episode The Secrets of Vesuvius He played Armand Duquesne in Marvels Hawkeye on Disney