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| Birth Name(s) : Simon Callow |
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Full Simon Callow Biography
Callow was born in Streatham, London, England, the son of Yvonne Mary (née Guise), a secretary, and Neil Francis Callow, a businessman. He was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and studied at the Queen's University of Belfast, before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre, London.
Callow was already a successful stage actor before making his film debut in a minor role in Amadeus in 1984 (having played Mozart in the original stage production at the Royal National Theatre). His first television role was in Carry On Laughing episode Orgy and Bess, in 1975, but it was apparently 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 a wider audience than his many critically acclaimed stage appearances.
At the same time, Callow was successful both as a director and as a writer. His Being An Actor (1984) was a critique of 'director dominated' theatre, in addition to containing autobiographical sections relating to his early career as an actor. At a time when subsidised theatre in the UK was under severe pressure from the Thatcher government, the work's original appearance caused a minor controversy. In 1995 he directed a stage version of the classic French film Les Enfants du Paradis (known as Children of Paradise in the United States) for the RSC. Unfortunately, the production was not a success. Callow has also directed opera productions.
Callow appeared with Saeed Jaffrey in 1994 British television series Little Napoleons. In 2004, he appeared on a Comic Relief episode of Little Britain for charity causes. In 2006, he wrote a piece for the BBC1 programme This Week bemoaning the lack of characters in modern politics. He has starred as Count Fosco, the villain of Wilkie Collins's novel The Woman in White, in film (1997) and on stage (2005, in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in the West End).
In December 2004, he hosted the London Gay Men's Chorus' Christmas Show, Make the Yuletide Gay at the Barbican Centre in London. He is currently one of the Patrons of the Michael Chekhov Studio London. Callow narrated the audio book of Robert Fagles' 2006 translation of Virgil's The Aeneid.
In 2008, Callow will appear at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada in his new one man show There Reigns Love, a play about the poetry of William Shakespeare.
Callow is one of the most prominent gay actors in Britain, listed 28th in the Indepedent newspaper's 2007 collection of the most infuential gay men and women in the UK. In 1999, he was awarded the CBE for his services to acting. He has also written biographies of Orson Welles and Charles Laughton. Callow was also the reader of “The Twits” and “The Witches” in the Puffin Roald Dahl Audio Books Collection (ISBN 978-0-140-92255-4). He also appeared in Little Britain Comic Relief |
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