Simon Phillip Hugh Callow (born 15 June 1949) is a British actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
Callow rose to prominence originating the title role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1979 Peter Shaffer play Amadeus for which he received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination. He joined the Miloš Forman 1984 film adaptation this time portraying Emanuel Schikaneder. In 1992 he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Musical for Carmen Jones. As an actor he won acclaim for his comedic roles in A Room with a View (1985) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) earning BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for each. Other notable roles include in Maurice (1987), Howards End (1992), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
His television roles include Tom Chance in the Channel 4 series Chance in a Million (1984) and The Duke of Sandringham in the series Outlander from 2014 to 2016. He portrayed Napoleon in The Man of Destiny (1981), and Charles Dickens in numerous television projects. He's also appeared on numerous shows such as Midsomer Murders, Rome, Angels in America, Doctor Who, Galavant, Hawkeye, and The Witcher.
Early years
Callow was born on 15 June 1949 in Streatham, south London, the son of Yvonne Mary (née Guise), a secretary and Neil Francis Callow, a businessman. His father was of French descent and his mother was of Danish and German ancestry. His father left when Simon was eighteen months old, and he was brought up by his mother and grandmothers. He and his mother travelled to what is now Zambia when he was nine to try and reconcile with his father. This did not happen, and Callow was sent for three years to boarding school in South Africa. He and his mother returned to Britain when he was twelve. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. Callow was a student at the London Oratory School in west Brompton, and then went on to study briefly at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, where he was active in the Gay liberation movement. He gave up his degree course after a year to take a three-year acting course at the Drama Centre London.
Career
Acting
Callow's immersion in the theatre began after he wrote a fan letter to Sir Laurence Olivier, the artistic director of the National Theatre and received a response suggesting he join their box-office staff. While watching actors rehearse, he realised he wanted to act.
Callow made his stage debut in 1973, appearing in The Three Estates at the Assembly Rooms Theatre, Edinburgh. In the early 1970s, he joined the Gay Sweatshop theatre company and performed in Martin Sherman's critically acclaimed Passing By. In 1977, he took various parts in the Joint Stock Theatre Company's production of Epsom Downs and in 1979, he starred in Snoo Wilson's The Soul of the White Ant at the Soho Poly.
Callow appeared as Verlaine in Total Eclipse (1982), Lord Foppington in The Relapse (1983) and the title role in Faust (1988) at the Lyric Hammersmith, where he also directed The Infernal Machine (with Dame Maggie Smith) in 1986. In 1985, he played Molina in Kiss of the Spiderwoman at the Bush Theatre, London. He played Mozart in the premiere of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the National Theatre (1979), also appearing in the 1983 BBC original cast radio production. He later wrote of having "discovered Mozart quite early: the operas, the symphonies, the concertos, the wind serenades were all very much part of my musical landscape when I was asked to play the part of the composer in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus; possibly this was one of the reasons I got the job." He appeared at the National Theatre as Orlando in As You Like It (1979) and Fulganzio in Life of Galileo (1980).