Simon Callow

Simon Callow born 15 June 1949

Simon Philip Hugh Callow, CBE is an English stage, film and television actor. He has also written biographies of Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles and Charles Laughton.

Callow was born in Streatham, London, England to Anglo/French parents 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 (1994) 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.

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).

His many other film appearances include: A Room with a View (1985), Maurice (1987), Shakespeare In Love (1998) and The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

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.

Between March and August 2009, he starred as Pozzo in Sean Mathias' production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett opposite Sir Ian McKellen (Estragon), Patrick Stewart (Vladimir) and also Ronald Pickup (Lucky).

Callow is one of the most prominent gay actors in Britain, listed 28th in the Independent's 2007 listing of the most influential gay men and women in the UK. In 1999 he was awarded the CBE for his services to acting.

Callow's last partner was director Daniel Kramer. They shared a house in Camden, North London, but have now ended their relationship.

He was one of the first actors publicly to declare his homosexuality, doing so in his 1984 book Being An Actor.