Biography
Samuel West was born on June 19, 1966 in Hammersmith, London, England as Samuel Alexander Joseph West. He is known for his work on Howards End (1992), Van Helsing (2004) and Notting Hill (1999).
Known For
Complete Filmography

Merchant Ivory
2024
as Self
The first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James...

Tubular Bells 50th Anniversary Tour Live Concert
2022
as Master of Ceremonies
Tubular Bells, one of the iconic musical works of the 20th century, and the highest selling instrumental album of all time, is approaching its 50th an...

Gatecrash
2020
as Policeman
A dark psychological thriller which follows a couple who find themselves in a hit and run situation, with the evidence suggesting there was no acciden...

The Gentlemen
2020
as Lord Pressfield
American expat Mickey Pearson has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the busine...

On Chesil Beach
2018
as Geoffrey Ponting
In 1962 England, a young couple finds their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and f...

Darkest Hour
2017
as Sir Anthony Eden
In May 1940, the fate of World War II hangs on Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it c...
All the world's a stage
2016
as Narrator (voice)
An animated adaptation of the famous Shakespeare poem 'All The World's a Stage' narrated by the renowned Shakespeare actor and director Samuel West.

Suffragette
2015
as Benedict Haughton
Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and m...

Inside the Court of Henry VIII
2015
as Narrator
Henry VIII is the most iconic king of English history. Part medieval tyrant, part renaissance prince, he ruled over his people as no king of England h...

The Eichmann Show
2015
as Narrator
The behind-the-scenes true life story of a groundbreaking producer, Milton Fruchtman, and blacklisted TV director Leo Hurwitz who, overcoming enormous...

The Riot Club
2014
as Tutor
Two first-year students at Oxford University join a secret society and learn that their reputations can be made or destroyed over the course of one ev...
If I Don't Come Home: Letters from D-Day
2014
as Norman Skinner
A partly dramatised account of the lives of four Allied servicemen ahead of D-Day, the programme told their story through their final letters home bef...

Secrets of Underground London
2014
as Narrator
Experts examine the ruins and relics hidden under London. Among them, a Roman amphitheater, ditches for victims of the black plague, bomb shelters and...

Faberge: A Life of Its Own
2014
as Narrator
This feature-doc tells the epic story of the Faberge name, from Imperial Russia until the present-day, spanning one hundred and fifty years of turbule...

Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath
2014
as Host
Stonehenge is an icon of prehistoric British culture, an enigma that has seduced archaeologists and tourists for centuries. Why is it here? What is it...

Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Burnt Mummy
2013
as Narrator

Secrets of the Tower of London
2013
as Narrator
A tour of the Tower of London, which has served as a royal castle, prison, place of execution and torture, armory and mint during its almost 1000 year...

Secrets of Henry VIII's Palace: Hampton Court
2013
as Narrator (voice)
The history of this grand 500-year-old palace is inextricably tied to the lavish lifestyle of King Henry VIII and the doomed fates of his six wives.

Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson
2012
as Narrator (voice)
The life and work of Tove Jansson, mainly known for creating the Moomins but also a writer and painter.

Wikileaks: Secrets and Lies
2012
as Narrator (voice)
Produced by Oxford Film and Television, Wikileaks: Secrets and Lies is Bafta winner Patrick Forbes' seventy-six-minute documentary of the Wikileaks af...

Hyde Park on Hudson
2012
as Bertie
The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the ...

Secrets of the Manor House
2012
as Narrator
Find out what went on behind the stately walls of the British manor house a century ago.

First Man on the Moon
2012
as Narrator (Voice UK)
Neil Armstrong's family and friends, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, tell the story of the first man to set foot on the moon. Drawing...

Hitler's Children
2011
as Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Their family name alone evokes horror: Himmler, Frank, Goering, Hoess. This film looks at the descendants of the most powerful figures in the Nazi reg...

Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters
2011
as Narrator
This film examines recently discovered letters written by socialite Wallis Simpson that reveal her secret love, and chart her fear as she found hersel...

Heath vs Wilson: The 10-Year Duel
2011
as Self - Narrator
Harold Wilson and Edward Heath are two very different men equally overlooked by history, but they were the political titans of the era in which Britai...

Dark Relic
2010
as Friar George
1099 A.D.: A battle-weary knight leads his men home from the Holy Land after years of fighting. But the supposedly holy relic he’s carrying bears a te...

BBC Horizon: Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?
2010
as Self - Narrator
There’s something very odd going on in space – something that shouldn’t be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered u...

Harold Pinter: A Celebration
2010
as Self
In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theat...

Albert Schweitzer
2009
as Phil Figgis
1949 the early years of the Cold War. Albert Schweitzer has become one of the most admired men in the world. The "jungle doctor" Albert Schweitzer tel...
The Blood of the Rose
2009
as Narrator
Documentary about the mysterious death of conservationist Joan Root in Kenya in 2006.

The Maharajas' Motor Car: The Story of Rolls-Royce in India
2009
as Narrator - (Voice)
Documentary which tells the story of Rolls-Royce in India by following the fortunes of India's princes from the zenith of British imperial power to th...

Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley
2008
as Ted Heath
A light hearted look at future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's rise from research chemist in 1949 to becoming MP for Finchley in 1959, encompassing...

Random Quest
2006
as Colin
Following a scientific experiment, a man wakes up in a parallel universe and begins living a life similar to, but different from, his own.

The First Emperor
2006
as Himself - Narrator
Docu-drama profiling Ying Sheng, the first Emperor of China. Charting the life of the man who unified China, this documentary begins with the future E...

Einstein's Big Idea
2005
as Humphry Davy
Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusio...

After the War: Conquering Germany
2005
as Narrator
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, an absorbing examination of the events that followed. 1945: Germany is beaten ...
Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich
2005
as Narrator (voice)
Documentary on the Herero and Namaqua genocide of 1904–1908.

Ring of the Nibelungs
2004
as Gunther
In this swords-and-sorcery tale, good-hearted blacksmith Eyvind hides away infant Prince Siegfried after two malevolent kings murder his father. But a...

Van Helsing
2004
as Dr. Victor Frankenstein
Famed monster slayer Gabriel Van Helsing is dispatched to Transylvania to assist the last of the Valerious bloodline in defeating Count Dracula. Anna ...

101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure
2003
as Pongo (voice)
Being one of 101 takes its toll on Patch, who doesn't feel unique. When he's accidentally left behind on moving day, he meets his idol, Thunderbolt, w...

Iris
2001
as Young Maurice
True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheime...

Pandaemonium
2001
as Robert Southey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an unstable but brilliant poet, becomes friends with the unknown William Wordsworth, and together they set out to recreate En...

Nero's Golden House
2001
as Narrator

Bread and Roses
2000
as Party Guest (uncredited)
Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa ge...

Complicity
2000
as Neil
Local journalist, Cameron Colley writes articles that are idealistic, from the viewpoint of the underdog. A twisted serial killer seems to have some m...

Longitude
2000
as Nevil Maskelyne
Parallel stories: 18th century Harrison builds the marine chronometer for safe navigation at sea; 20th century Gould is obsessed with restoring it.

Runt
1999
as Pork
Shane and his mates want revenge on a local hermit who frightens them one night. Shane distracts the man while the gang carries out its plan. But who...
In Excess: The Death of Michael Hutchence
1999
as Narrator (voice)
Documentary from the UK's Channel 4 investigating the death of INXS lead vocalist Michael Hutchence, which exclusively revealed information presented ...

Notting Hill
1999
as Anna's Co-Star
London bookstore owner William Thacker's quiet life turns upside down when a chance encounter with famous actress Anna Scott sparks an unlikely romanc...

Hornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters
1999
as Major Edrington
Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.
War of the Century - When Hitler Fought Stalin
1999
as Narrator
In June 1941, Hitler broke the golden rule of warfare never to fight on opposite fronts and marched into the Soviet Union. What would drive him to mak...

The Dance of Shiva
1998
as Lieutenant Davies
In the trenches of the Western Front in 1915, a British army chaplain is forced to question his faith as he witnesses hundreds of Hindu soldiers riski...

Rupert's Land
1998
as Rupert McKay
In this Canadian road movie, two brothers who haven't seen each other in years are uncomfortably reunited when they have to travel together from Vanco...

Stiff Upper Lips
1998
as Edward
Stiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Alt...

I Hate Christmas Too
1997
as Soldier
An unhappy man has an encounter with the ghost of a World War I soldier, who tells him about the 1914 Christmas truce and gives him a new perspective ...

The Ripper
1997
as Prince Albert Victor Edward
It is 1888, and London is in the grip of one of the most gruesome and mysterious crime sprees in history. Under extreme pressure from the Royal family...

Danielle Steel's Zoya
1997
as Nicolai
A young Russian countess escapes the 1917 revolution and, despite hardship, makes a new life for herself in America.

Jane Eyre
1996
as St John Rivers
After a bleak childhood, Jane Eyre goes out into the world to become a governess. As she lives happily in her new position at Thornfield Hall, she mee...

Heavy Weather
1995
as 'Monty' Bodkin
At Blandings Castle, the Earl of Emsworth only cares about his prize pig 'The Empress' and is wilfully ignorant of the fact that his brother is planni...

Carrington
1995
as Gerald Brenan
Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by...

Persuasion
1995
as Mr. Elliot
Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, is persuaded to break her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young sea capt...

The Vacillations of Poppy Carew
1995
as Victor
Adaptation of the novel by Mary Wesley.

Open Fire
1994
as Stephen Waldorf
Based on real events from 1983; DC Peter Finch is awarded a medal for the courage he showed in arresting a dangerous criminal. Meanwhile transvestite...

A Feast at Midnight
1994
as Chef
A new student at a British public school forms a secret society centered around cooking and midnight feasting with other school misfits and outcasts.

A Breed of Heroes
1994
as Lt. Charles Thoroughgood
In 1971, fresh-faced, eager for heroics, the young officers arrive in Belfast. Pelted with rocks by kids, sniped at by the IRA, they take refuge in se...

Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time
1993
as Cyrian
All of the Doctor's incarnations are in crisis when The Rani creates a time-loop in the East-end of London in this 30th Anniversary Special.

The Maitlands
1993
as Jack Maitland
There is a strained atmosphere in the Maitland household which has fallen on hard times.
Archipel
1993
as Alan Stewart
A teenager at a predominantly male boarding school learns lessons in love when he is invited to stay at a remote estate for the holiday season.

Voices in the Garden
1993
as Mark
Sir Archie and Cuckoo Peveril have lived in elegant splendour on Cap Ferrat since the end of the war. But the heady days of extravagant socialising ha...

Howards End
1992
as Leonard Bast
A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, al...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian & The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
1989
as King Caspian
Young Prince Caspian of Narnia wonders and dreams about the old days of Narnia when animals talked, and there were mythical creatures and four rulers ...

Reunion
1989
as Count Konradin von Lohenburg
Attorney Henry Strauss grew up in Germany, but left the country with his Jewish family during the rise of the Third Reich. Still wondering about what ...

Frankie and Johnnie
1986
as Johnnie Mallett
When two teenagers commit suicide the police and the press assume the motive to be some kind of love pact. But Allan Blakeston, a local reporter, has ...

Time & Tide - A Trilogy
N/A
Across the years, a mother watches her gladiator son fight, while she remembers his childhood: the last lighthouse keeper prepares for his final trip ...
The Book of Water
N/A
as Narrator/Geiser
The Book of Water is a chamber music theatre project based upon the novella Man in the Holocene by Swiss author Max Frisch. The work centres around th...