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| Birth Name(s) : Mark Umbers |
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Full Mark Umbers Biography
Umbers was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, on 17 June 1973 and grew up in Wetherby. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, famous for its rugby alumni such as Will Carling and Will Greenwood. In 1991, he gained a place at Oxford University to read Classics (Literae Humaniores), graduating in 1995. While studying Latin and Greek Literature and Philosophy, he appeared in many student drama productions - including, ironically, Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion in which he played Freddy, a role that he would reprise a decade later in My Fair Lady at the Royal National Theatre in London.
His first professional theatre engagement, two years later, in Joseph Papp's version of The Pirates of Penzance (at West Yorkshire Playhouse), led The Times theatre critic Jeremy Kingston to note that:
"Mark Umbers in, astonishingly, his professional debut, possesses heroic stature, can suggest transparent honesty, articulates his vowels with model clarity, and shows a sense of the ridiculous that avoids archness".
"I looked up Frederic in the programme to see who he was played by, and found it was an actor called Mark Umbers, of whom his programme biographical note said: 'The Pirates of Penzance is Mark's first professional theatre work.' Blimey. If that was his first job, he's going to go far..."
"the strongest blast of adult emotion comes from the excellent Mark Umbers, who makes Freddy an unusually virile and ardent admirer for Eliza...he almost scuppers the rest of the show, because it makes everyone else seem measly."
"Umbers is that rare Freddy who actually seems like a worthy competitor to Higgins, and the actor brings down the house with On The Street Where You Live, his lush baritone the production's single most notable vocal feat. Returning to the song later in Act Two, he makes a hilariously lovesick lush, a dizzy suitor soaring in his affections "seven stories high" even as his body is splayed drunkenly across Wimpole Street. One benefit of Umbers' allure: when Higgins snaps in disbelief, "Marry Freddy?!", he is responding out of jealousy, not condescension."
"The pleasant discovery of this work is the excellence of the male performers...there's the heretofore unknown Mark Umbers as Robert Windermere, seemingly a callow rotter cheating on his perfect little wife, Scarlett Johansson. She's so perfect, who wouldn't cheat on her! The British Umbers does a great job of making the young Windermere a wealthy New York stockbroker, without a trace of accent. He also makes him seem straightforward and dumb and foolish, but then he gradually pulls back the curtains and shows us so much more."
After playing opposite Academy Award winner Anjelica Huston, Terence Stamp and Lauren Bacall in the British independent film These Foolish Things, and alongside John Malkovich in Colour Me Kubrick, he played the lead role of Perkin Warbeck in Channel 4's historical drama Princes in the Tower, described by Daily Telegraph TV critic Gerard O'Donovan as a "wonderfully convincing performance". The Spectator columnist Ann Wroe, acclaimed author of "Perkin: A Story of Deception", wrote that
Described by BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review as "a simply brilliant performance", Evening Standard critic Nicholas de Jongh also raved "the crucial scene is played with an overpowering sense of intimacy and delicacy. In Umbers' brilliant, believable reading acted with indelible pathos".
"And as proof that the last shall be best, along comes Umbers in the second act to reinvent a potentially throwaway part, just as he did playing Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the National Theatre revival of My Fair Lady. Playing a 23-year-old inhabiting that elastic spectrum between disappointment and discouragement, the actor cuts a Jim of Chekovian pathos in its communication of an impetuosity that both seduces and kills: the long kiss he gives Laura only then to take those feelings away...a climactic scene that I can imagine waiting many years to see done better."Mark Umbers as the Gentleman Caller in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie
"the hush in which the audience hung on every heartbeat in this scene...It is Mark Umbers who does most of the talking, and his is an ideal performance, the golden boy who reveals his disappointments, who lights up Laura's existence and who beats it, never to return."
"It is Mark Umbers who sets the thing alight. Handsome and in command of his swaggering yet disappointed character, he is the most memorable thing about this production".
Unusually for an actor in a supporting role, Umbers was longlisted for the Best Actor award at the London Evening Standard Awards 2007.
According to IMDb, he has written a screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, due for release in 2009, in which he will also star as Polixenes.
Internet Movie Database page Mark Umbers clips from Princes in the Tower, These Foolish Things, Colour Me Kubrick, A Good Woman |
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