Edward Petherbridge

EDWARD PETHERBRIDGE is an actor, essayist, poet and visual artist. He was born in Bradford in 1936 and trained at the Northern Theatre School. He made his professional stage debut at the Ludlow Festival in 1956, playing Gaveston in Marlowe's Edward II. His first London appearance was at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 1962, playing Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He began his tenure as part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company in the 1960s, walking on in Olivier's Othello and later creating the role of Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Edward has been a leading actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre; was a founding member of the Actors' Company in 1972; and with Ian McKellen established the McKellen-Petherbridge Group at the RNT in 1985. He is a winner of the Olivier and London Theatre Critics' Awards, and has twice been nominated for a Tony Award. He has also been a recipient of the Sony Award for Best Actor in a Radio Drama. He has been praised for both tragic and comic parts, interpreting a wide range of roles from Euripides to Feydeau. His major roles on stage include Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby; Charlie Marsden in Strange Interlude; Gaev in the Cherry Orchard; the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi; Alceste in The Misanthrope; Frank Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor; Malvolio in Twelfth Night, King Cymbeline in Cymbeline; Dr Dorn in The Seagull; Sir Anthony Blunt in Single Spies; and Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape. His most recent stage roles include Donner in Tom Stoppard's Artist Descending a Staircase and Tiresias in Sophocles' Antigone. Edward has performed in a number of stage musicals, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White, Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars, and most recently The Fantasticks by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones. He has devised a number of innovative one-man shows on a variety of subjects. In addition to acting, he has presented mime workshops and directed, particularly for the Actors' Company. On television he was a definitive Lord Peter Wimsey in the Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries. Other television appearances include Journey's End, Maigret, A Christmas Carol, The Brief and Midsomer Murders. His film roles include Richard St Ives in Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure. His latest film appearance was in Pope Joan, directed by Sönke Wortmann and released in October 2009. In 1989 he was awarded an Honorary D.Litt. by the University of Bradford. Edward lives in London and is married to fellow actor Emily Richard, with whom he has appeared several times on stage. He has three children. Visit Edward's official website: http://pethsstagingpost.com/