Biography
Sir Simon Russell Beale CBE (born January 12, 1961) is an English actor. He is known for his appearances in film, television and theatre, and work on radio, on audiobooks and as a narrator. For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2019. He has spent much of his theatre career working in productions for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He has received ten Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning three awards for his perfo...
Known For
Complete Filmography
The Choral
2025
Set in Ramsden, Yorkshire in 1916, the plot centers on the chorus master and most of the men of the ambitious local Choral Society, who have volunteer...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
2025
When Mary finds herself at the center of a public scandal and the family faces financial trouble, the entire household grapples with the threat of soc...

Firebrand
2024
as Stephen Gardiner
Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, is named regent while the tyrant battles abroad. When the king returns, increasingly ill and parano...

Home! Home!
2024
as Self (narrator)
A lyric documentary about home, time, memory and mortality, written by Terence Davies and realised posthumously by the PASSING TIME team, produced for...

Thor: Love and Thunder
2022
as Dionysus
After his retirement is interrupted by Gorr the God Butcher, a galactic killer who seeks the extinction of the gods, Thor Odinson enlists the help of ...

Operation Mincemeat
2022
as Winston Churchill
In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain w...

The Outfit
2022
as Roy Boyle
Leonard is an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. After a personal tragedy, he’s ended up in Chicago, operatin...

Benediction
2021
as Robbie Ross
Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery, but became a vocal critic of the gov...

A Christmas Carol
2020
as Scrooge's voice (voice)
The radical new take on Dickens’ classic seeks both to exhume the original story’s gritty commentary on social inequality and the corrupting influence...

The Hour
2020
as Himself
The hour before actors go on stage at the National Theatre in London is a performance in and of itself.

Radioactive
2020
as Professor Lippmann
The story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the s...

National Theatre Live: The Lehman Trilogy
2019
as Henry Lehman
On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside. Dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by h...

National Theatre Live: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
2019
as Richard II
Simon Russell Beale plays William Shakespeare’s Richard II, broadcast live from the stage of the Almeida Theatre in London to cinemas.

Mary Queen of Scots
2018
as Robert Beale
In 1561, Mary Stuart, widow of the King of France, returns to Scotland, reclaims her rightful throne and menaces the future of Queen Elizabeth I as ru...

Operation Finale
2018
as David Ben-Gurion
In 1960, a team of Israeli secret agents is deployed to find Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi architect of the Holocaust, supposedly hidden in Argent...

Museo
2018
as Frank Graves
Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away w...

The Death of Stalin
2017
as Lavrenti Beria
When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. As they bumble, brawl...

My Cousin Rachel
2017
as Couch
A young Englishman plots revenge against his mysterious, beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. But his feelings become complicat...

RSC Live: The Tempest
2017
as Prospero
On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and th...

The Legend of Tarzan
2016
as Mr. Frum
Tarzan, having acclimated to life in London, is called back to his former home in the jungle to investigate the activities at a mining encampment.

Cunk on Shakespeare
2016
as Self - Actor
Fresh from her triumphs on Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe investigating time, Winston Churchill, and Donald Trump, Philomena Cunk has finally been give...

Shakespeare Live! From the RSC
2016
as Richard II
From the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and guests mark the life of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversar...

Monteverdi in Mantua - The Genius of the Vespers
2015
as presenter
Monteverdi in Mantua tells the story of the Duke of Mantua and his court composer Claudio Monteverdi during the turbulent times of the late Italian re...

Into the Woods
2014
as Baker's Father
In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.
The Mysterious Mr Webster
2014
as Self - Interviewee
Professor James Shapiro goes in search of the mysterious man behind The Duchess of Malfi, the son of a coachmaker who ended up rivalling Shakespeare.

National Theatre Live: King Lear
2014
as Lear, King of Britain
An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of them is most eloquent in praising him. His favourite, Co...

Legacy
2013
as Hookey
A KGB plot to attack the UK has plunged Britain into a state of emergency. Charles, a young MI6 spy, is asked to revive an old friendship with Russian...

Lava Land - Glowing Hawaii
2013
as Narrator
Hawaii, with its tropical rainforests and diverse coral reef is a spectacular natural paradise for travellers, surfers and all fans of breathtaking sa...

National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage
2013
as Hamlet
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best Brit...

Muse of Fire
2013
as Self
Funny, passionate, exciting, and smart: ‘Muse Of Fire’ will change the way you feel about Shakespeare forever. This unique feature documentary follow...

National Theatre Live: Timon of Athens
2012
as Timon
Based on Shakespeare’s play, Timon of Athens tells the tale of conspicuous consumption, debt and ruin. Timon of Athens is a wealthy friend to the rich...

Shakespeare's Sonnets
2012
Released alongside a spectacular edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the Apple iPad, this beautifully produced DVD features specially filmed performa...

A Musical Nativity with John Rutter
2011
Katie Derham introduces a retelling of the Nativity through the music of John Rutter. Conducted by Rutter himself at Dorchester Abbey, with readings b...

National Theatre Live: Collaborators
2011
as Joseph Stalin
John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.

The Deep Blue Sea
2011
as Sir William Collyer
The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot.

My Week with Marilyn
2011
as Cotes-Preedy
London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of his upcoming movie, premiered in 1957 as The Prince an...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House)
2011
as The Duchess / Introduced by
A full-length ballet created by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The ballet is based o...

A Christmas History
2010
as Presenter
Simon Russell Beale takes a journey through Italy, Britain, Germany and Austria as he explores how the sound of Christmas has evolved in response to c...

National Theatre Live: London Assurance
2010
as Sir Harcourt Courtly
Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charl...

BBC Proms: Sondheim's 80th Birthday
2010
as Himself - Performer
Marking the 80th birthday of one of Broadway's great innovators, the first ever all-Sondheim Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert includes excer...

An Easter Celebration
2008
as presenter
Simon Russell Beale presents a special concert for Easter from LSO St Luke's in London, performed by the award-winning choir The Sixteen, conducted by...

Deep Water
2006
as Donald Crowhurst (voice)
DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ev...

The Young Visiters
2003
as Prince of Wales
The Young Visiters, written in twelve days by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890, is a surreal blend of naiveté, precocious perception and inadverten...

The Gathering
2003
as Luke Fraser
Itinerant traveler Cassie Grant comes out of a car accident in Glastonbury, England, with partial memory loss. The deeply regretful driver allows her ...

Blackadder: Back & Forth
1999
as Wellington
What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly incompetent friends, turns out to be the real thing and h...

Alice in Wonderland
1999
as King Cedric of Hearts
Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy W...

An Ideal Husband
1999
as Sir Edward
Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London w...

Hamlet
1996
as Second Gravedigger
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing.

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

Orlando
1992
as Earl of Moray
England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to sat...
Time and the Conways
1985
as Party Guest
1919: the World War is over. Kay Conway celebrates her 21st birthday and all the family look forward with hope and confidence. Then Time begins to con...
De Gaulle – Partie 1 : La France Libre
N/A
as Winston Churchill
Part one of a two-part biopic following French army officer Charles De Gaulle's life and political commitment between 1940 and 1945, and trace his dev...

The Magic Faraway Tree
N/A
Soon after the Thompson family’s arrival in the countryside, the three children – Beth, Joe, and Fran – discover a magical tree and its extraordinary ...
De Gaulle – Partie 2
N/A
as Winston Churchill
Part two of a two-part biopic following French army officer Charles De Gaulle's life and political commitment between 1940 and 1945, and trace his dev...