Anthony Andrews


Anthony Colin Gerald Andrews is an English actor. He played Lord Sebastian Flyte in the ITV miniseries Brideshead Revisited, for which he won Golden Globe and BAFTA television awards and was nominated for an Emmy. His other lead roles include Operation Daybreak, Danger UXB, Ivanhoe and The Scarlet Pimpernel, and he played UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in The King's Speech.

Early life and career

Andrews was born in London, the son of Geraldine Agnes, a dancer, and Stanley Thomas Andrews, an arranger and conductor for the BBC. He grew up in North Finchley, London. At the age of eight, he took dancing lessons, making his stage debut as the White Rabbit in a stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. He attended the Royal Masonic School for Boys in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
After a series of jobs that included catering, farming and journalism, he secured a position at the Chichester Theatre, where he worked as an assistant stage manager and later as a stand-in producer. In 1968, he auditioned for a production of Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On, which featured John Gielgud as the headmaster of a British public school during the World War I period. Andrews was cast as Skinner, one of 20 schoolboys. In 1974, he played Lord Robert, Marquis of Stockbridge, in the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs. In 1975, he had a leading role in the Spanish film Las adolescentes, opposite Koo Stark.
In June 1977, Andrews was cast as Bodie in the ITV series The Professionals, but after three days of filming, the creator and producer Brian Clemens believed the chemistry between Andrews and Martin Shaw did not work and that "the pair did not have the required undercurrent of menace to carry off the concept". Lewis Collins replaced Andrews. In 1979, Andrews was the main star of the ITV television series Danger UXB, playing a bomb disposal officer in the London Blitz. The series first aired in the United Kingdom in 1979 on the ITV network.
His subsequent work includes the leading role of Lord Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. In 1982, he won a Golden Globe and BAFTA TV Award for his performance and was nominated for an Emmy Award. In the United States, Andrews is best known for his portrayal of the titular character in the television film Ivanhoe as well as that of Sir Percy Blakeney in the film The Scarlet Pimpernel.
At the National Theatre in London, he appeared in Coming in to Land by Stephen Poliakoff, alongside Dame Maggie Smith. He also played Henry Higgins in a stage version of My Fair Lady and Count Fosco in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White.
Andrews narrated a 21st-anniversary BBC Radio 2 special broadcast of Cameron Mackintosh's musical Les Misérables, sung by the then West End cast at the Mermaid Theatre in London on Sunday 8 October 2006. He appeared as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in the film The King's Speech, for which he and his castmates won a 2011 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Personal life

Andrews met actress Georgina Simpson, whose family owned the Simpsons of Piccadilly Department Store. They married on 1 December 1971 and have three children.
Andrews survived a case of water intoxication in 2003. The condition, also known as hyponatraemia, occurs when sodium ions in the body are diluted so far that nerves are unable to function properly. The condition has symptoms similar to those of dehydration, such as headaches, nausea and cramps. While performing as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Andrews consumed up to eight litres of water a day. He lost consciousness and spent three days in intensive care.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Producing credits

  • Lost in Siberia
  • ''Haunted''

    Awards and nominations