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Simon Philip Hugh Callow, CBE (born June 15, 1949) is an English actor of stage, film and television, and a biographer of Orson Welles and Charles Laughton.

Biography

Callow was born in Streatham, London, England to Neil Francis Callow (British) and Yvonne Mary Guise (French) and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother. He studied at the Queen's University of Belfast before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre, London. He 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).

By his thirties, Callow was playing character and often comic parts. 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, he was successful both as a director and as a writer — mostly of works about acting.

One of Callow's best-known works is Love Is Where It Falls, a poignant analysis of his eleven-year relationship with Peggy Ramsay, a prominent theatrical agent. He has also written extensively about Charles Dickens, whom he has played in a one-man show on stage, The Mystery of Charles Dickens and reading from Dickens' work, and on television several times, including in The Unquiet Dead, a 2005 episode of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who.

Callow is also one of the most prominent gay actors in Britain.

In 1999, he was awarded the CBE for his services to acting.

His first TV role was in Carry On Laughing episode Orgy and Bess, in 1975, but it was apparently cut from the final print.

He 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 December, he hosted the London Gay Men's Chorus' Christmas Show, Make the Yuletide Gay at the Barbican Centre in London.

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 West End).

He is currently one of the Patrons of the Michael Chekhov Studio London.

Selected filmography

Filmography

Television

• Chance in a Million (1984)
• Little Napoleons (1994)
• Angels in America (2003)
• Shoebox Zoo (2004) (voice)
• Doctor Who - The Unquiet Dead (2005) (as Charles Dickens)
• Rome (2005)

External links

• Simon Callow Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing, September 2006
• Simon Callow on BBC1's This Week

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