# Anthony Andrews

Anthony Colin Gerald Andrews (born 12 January 1948) is an English actor. He played Lord Sebastian Flyte in the ITV miniseries Brideshead Revisited (1981), for which he won Golden Globe and BAFTA television awards, and was nominated for an Emmy. His other lead roles include: Operation Daybreak (1975), Danger UXB (1979), Ivanhoe (1982) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), and he played British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in The King's Speech (2010).

## Early life and career

Andrews was born in London, the son of Geraldine Agnes (née Cooper), 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 new play, Forty Years On, which featured John Gielgud as the headmaster of a British public school during the First World War period. Andrews was cast as Skinner, one of twenty 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 (The Adolescents), opposite Koo Stark.
In June 1977, he was cast in the role of Bodie in the ITV series The Professionals. However, after three days of filming, the creator and producer Brian Clemens believed that the chemistry between Andrews and Martin Shaw (Doyle) 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 the part. Following that, in 1979, Andrews was the main star of the ITV television series Danger UXB, in which he played a British 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 (1981). 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 (both 1982).
At the National Theatre in London, he was in Coming in to Land (1986/1987) by Stephen Poliakoff, alongside Dame Maggie Smith. He also played Professor Higgins in a stage version of My Fair Lady (2003), and Count Fosco in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White (2005).
He was the narrator for 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. Andrews appeared as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in the film The King's Speech (2010), 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 of the Simpsons of Piccadilly department store family and they were married on 1 December 1971. They have three children.
Andrews survived a case of water intoxication in 2003. The condition, also known as hyponatraemia ("low blood sodium"), 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

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1972 | A War of Children | Reg Hogg | TV film |
| 1972 | A Day Out | Brothers | TV film |
| 1973 | Take Me High | Hugo Flaxman | |
| 1974 | Percy's Progress | Catchpole | |
| 1975 | The Adolescents | Jimmy | |
| 1975 | Operation Daybreak | Jozef Gabčík | |
| 1976 | Call Girl | Marcos | |
| 1978 | Much Ado About Nothing | Claudio | TV film |
| 1981 | Mistress of Paradise | Buckley | TV film |
| 1982 | Ivanhoe | Wilfred of Ivanhoe | TV film |
| 1982 | La Ronde | The Young Gentleman | TV film |
| 1982 | The Scarlet Pimpernel | Sir Percy Blakeney | TV film |
| 1983 | Sparkling Cyanide | Tony Browne | TV film |
| 1984 | Under the Volcano | Hugh Firmin | |
| 1985 | The Holcroft Covenant | Johann von Tiebolt | |
| 1986 | The Second Victory | Major Hanlon | |
| 1987 | The Lighthorsemen | Major Richard Meinertzhagen | |
| 1988 | Bluegrass | Michael Fitzgerald | TV film |
| 1988 | The Woman He Loved | Prince of Wales | TV film |
| 1988 | Hanna's War | McCormack | |
| 1990 | Hands of a Murderer | Professor Moriarty | TV film |
| 1991 | Lost in Siberia | Andrei Miller | |
| 1995 | Haunted | Robert Mariell | |
| 2000 | David Copperfield | Edward Murdstone | TV film |
| 2007 | Last Night | Dad | Short film |
| 2010 | The King's Speech | Stanley Baldwin | |
| 2019 | The Professor and the Madman | Benjamin Jowett | |

### Television

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1968 | The Wednesday Play | Harry | Episode: "A Beast with Two Backs" |
| 1972 | Dixon of Dock Green | Paul Richards | Episode: "First Offenders" |
| 1972 | Doomwatch | Carlos | Episode: "Say Knife, Fat Man" |
| 1972 | Follyfoot | Lord Beck | Episode: "The Awakening" |
| 1972 | Thirty-Minute Theatre | Michael Warren | Episode: "The Judge's Wife" |
| 1974 | The Fortunes of Nigel | Sir Nigel Olifaunt | Mini-series, 5 episodes |
| 1974 | QB VII | Stephen Kelno | Mini-series, 2 episodes |
| 1974 | The Pallisers | Earl of Silverbridge | Recurring role, 7 episodes |
| 1974-1975 | David Copperfield | Steerforth | Mini-series, 4 episodes |
| 1975 | Upstairs, Downstairs | Marquis of Stockbridge | Recurring role, 3 episodes |
| 1976 | The Duchess of Duke Street | Marcus Carrington | Episode: "Lottie's Boy" |
| 1976 | BBC Play of the Month | Hon. Alan Howard | Episode: "French Without Tears" |
| 1976 | BBC Play of the Month | Charles Courtley | Episode: "London Assurance" |
| 1977 | Wings | Lieutenant Walker | Episode: "The Prisoner's Friend" |
| 1977 | The Sunday Drama | Harry | Episode: "A Superstition" |
| 1977 | BBC Play of the Month | Horner | Episode: "The Country Wife" |
| 1978 | BBC Television Shakespeare | Mercutio | Episode: "Romeo and Juliet" |
| 1979 | Danger UXB | Brian Ash | Series regular, 13 episodes |
| 1981 | The Love Boat | Tony Selkirk | Recurring role, 3 episodes |
| 1981 | Brideshead Revisited | Sebastian Flyte | Recurring role, 6 episodes |
| 1984 | Play for Today | John Loomis | Episode: "Z for Zachariah" |
| 1985 | A.D. | Nero | Mini-series, 5 episodes |
| 1988 | American Playhouse | Johnnie Aysgarth | Episode: "Suspicion" |
| 1989 | A Fine Romance | Michael Trent | Episode: "Pilot" |
| 1989 | Columbo | Elliott Blake | Episode: "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" |
| 1989 | Nightmare Classics | Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde | Episode: "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" |
| 1992 | Danielle Steel's Jewels | William Whitfield | Mini-series, 2 episodes |
| 1992 | Screen Two | Christopher Edwardes | Episode: "The Law Lord" |
| 1996 | The Ruth Rendell Mysteries | Luke Crossland | Episode: "Heartstones" |
| 1996 | Tales from the Crypt | Jonathan | Episode: "About Face" |
| 1997 | Screen Two | Robin | Episode: "Mothertime" |
| 2001 | Love in a Cold Climate | Boy | Mini-series, 3 episodes |
| 2003 | Cambridge Spies | King George VI | Mini-series, 1 episode |
| 2004 | Rosemary & Thyme | Richard Oakley | Episode: "The Invisible Worm" |
| 2006 | Agatha Christie's Marple | Tommy Beresford | Episode: "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" |
| 2012 | Birdsong | Colonel Barclay | Mini-series, 1 episode |
| 2015 | The Syndicate | Lord Hazelwood | Series regular, 6 episodes |
| 2020 | The English Game | Lord Kinnaird | Recurring role, 5 episodes |

### Theatre

| Year | Title | Role | Venue | Notes |
| 1968 | Dragon Variations | Douglas Blake | Duke of York's Theatre, London | |
| 1968 | Forty Years On | Skinner | Apollo Theatre, London | |
| 1971 | Romeo and Juliet | Balthasar | Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, London | with New Shakespeare Company |
| 1971 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | Mustardseed | Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, London | with New Shakespeare Company |
| 1986 | One of Us | Garonway Rees | Greenwich Theatre, London | |
| 1987 | Coming Into Land | Neville | Lyttelton Theatre, London | |
| 1999 | Vertigo | | Theatre Royal, Windsor | |
| 2001 | Ghosts | Pastor Manders | Comedy Theatre, London | |
| 2003 | My Fair Lady | Henry Higgins | Drury Lane Theatre, London | |
| 2005 | The Woman in White | Count Fosco | Palace Theatre, London | |
| 2007 | The Letter | Howard Joyce | Wyndham's Theatre, London | |
| 2011 | Bully Boy | Major Oscar Hadley | Nuffield Theatre, Southampton | |
| 2012 | A Marvellous Year for Plums | Sir Anthony Eden | Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester | |

## Producing credits

* Lost in Siberia (1991)
* Haunted (1995)

## Awards and nominations

| Year | Award | Category | Work | Result |
| 1982 | British Academy Television Awards | Best Actor | Brideshead Revisited | Won |
| 1982 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie | Brideshead Revisited | Nominated |
| 1983 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television | Brideshead Revisited | Won |
| 1991 | CableACE Award | Best Actor in a Dramatic Series | Nightmare Classics | Nominated |
| 1993 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television | Danielle Steel's Jewels | Nominated |
| 2011 | Santa Barbara International Film Festival | Best Motion Picture Ensemble of the Year (with Claire Bloom, Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce, Geoffrey Rush & Timothy Spall) | The King's Speech | Won |
| 2011 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (with Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce, Geoffrey Rush & Timothy Spall) | The King's Speech | Won |