# James Wilby

James Jonathon Wilby (born 20 February 1958) is an English actor.

## Early life and education

Wilby was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father. He was educated at Terrington Hall and Sedbergh School, studied for a degree in Mathematics at Grey College, Durham, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

## Career

Wilby's first appearance on screen was in the Oxford Film Company production Privileged (1982) alongside Hugh Grant. He acted with Grant again in the Merchant Ivory period film Maurice (1987), which brought him to the attention of an international audience and earned Wilby and Grant the Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award. He then starred in A Handful of Dust (1988), for which he won the Bari Film Festival Best Actor award. His further roles included A Tale of Two Cities (1989) for Granada Television, Howards End (1992), Regeneration (1997), Ismail Merchant's Cotton Mary (1999), Gosford Park (2001), and Alain Robbe-Grillet's C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006), co-starring Arielle Dombasle, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
On stage, Wilby starred in the 1995 revival of John Osborne's A Patriot for Me by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre. He then appeared in a production of Helping Harry at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2001; and in 2004 as the title character in a run of Don Juan at the Lyric Theatre. He has also starred in On Emotion (2008) at the Soho Theatre; The Consultant (2011) by Neil Fleming and the Hydrocracker Theatre Company at Theatre503 in London; and in tours of Terence Rattigan's Less Than Kind (2012) and Patrick Hamilton's Gaslight (2019).

## Personal life

Wilby is married to Shana Louise and has four children.
From 1994 to 2015, Wilby owned The Laines, an 18th-century country house in Plumpton, East Sussex, near Lewes. It was the childhood home of Queen Camilla.

## Filmography
### Film

| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
| 1982 | Privileged | Jamie | |
| 1985 | Dreamchild | Baker | |
| 1985 | A Room with a View | Party Guest | Uncredited |
| 1987 | Maurice | Maurice Hall | |
| 1988 | A Handful of Dust | Tony Last | |
| 1988 | A Summer Story | Mr. Ashton | |
| 1989 | Conspiracy | Stringer | |
| 1991 | The Siege of Venice | Milord Runbiff | |
| 1991 | Adam Bede | Arthur Donnithorne | |
| 1992 | Howards End | Charles Wilcox | |
| 1992 | Immaculate Conception | Alistair | |
| 1994 | La partie d'échecs | Lord Staunton | |
| 1997 | Regeneration | 2nd Lt. Siegfried Sassoon | |
| 1998 | An Ideal Husband | Sir Robert Chiltern | |
| 1999 | Tom's Midnight Garden | Uncle Alan Kitson | |
| 1999 | Cotton Mary | John MacIntosh | |
| 2001 | Jump Tomorrow | Nathan | |
| 2001 | Gosford Park | Freddie Nesbitt | |
| 2004 | De-Lovely | Edward Thomas | |
| 2006 | Gradiva (C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle) | John Locke | |
| 2008 | Lady Godiva | Leofric | |
| 2009 | Shadows in the Sun | Robert | |
| 2011 | We Need to Talk About Keiran | Professor Hugh Merrill | |
| 2016 | ChickLit | Geoffrey | |
| 2016 | The Swing of It | Jim | Short film |
| 2017 | The Sense of an Ending | David Ford | |
| 2019 | Salt | Conrad | Short film |
| 2020 | The Duke | Judge Aarvold | |
| 2022 | Masquerade | Thomas | |
| TBA | Vindication Swim | Mr. Havers | |

### Television

| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
| 1984 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Young Barclay | Episode: "The Crooked Man" |
| 1984 | The Bill | Higgins | Episode: "A Friend in Need" |
| 1985 | Dutch Girls | Dundine | TV movie |
| 1988 | The Storyteller | Prince | Episode: "Sapsorrow" |
| 1989 | A Tale of Two Cities | Sydney Carton | TV mini-series |
| 1989 | Mother Love | Christopher "Kit" Vesey | TV mini-series |
| 1991 | Screen One | Michael Evans | Episode: "Tell Me That You Love Me" |
| 1993 | You, Me and It | Charles Henderson | TV mini-series, 3 episodes |
| 1993 | Lady Chatterley | Sir Clifford Chatterley | 4 episodes |
| 1994 | Crocodile Shoes | Ade Lynn | TV mini-series, 6 episodes |
| 1996 | The Treasure Seekers | Henry Carlisle | TV movie |
| 1996 | Witness Against Hitler | Helmuth James von Moltke | TV movie |
| 1996 | Tales from the Crypt | Nick Marvin | Episode: "Horrors in the Night" |
| 1997 | The Woman in White | Sir Percival Glyde | TV movie |
| 1997 | Original Sin | Gerard Etienne | TV series |
| 1999 | The Dark Room | Dr. Alan Protheroe | TV movie |
| 2000 | Trial & Retribution | James McCready | 2 episodes |
| 2001 | Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years | Zippo Montefiore | 1 episode |
| 2002 | Bertie and Elizabeth | King George VI | TV film |
| 2002 | Westlife: Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits, Volume I | High class customer ("Uptown Girl") | video |
| 2002 | George Eliot: A Scandalous Life | George Spencer | TV film |
| 2003 | Murder in Mind | Daniel Morton/Sir Richard Morton | Episode: "Echoes" |
| 2003 | Sparkling Cyanide | Stephen Farraday | TV movie |
| 2004 | Island at War | Sen. James Dorr | TV mini-series, 3 episodes |
| 2004 | Silent Witness | Matt Gibb | TV series, 2 episodes: "Nowhere Fast" |
| 2004 | Foyle's War | Major Cornwall | Episode: "They Fought in the Fields" |
| 2005 | Jericho | Alan Mills | TV series (1 episode: "The Hollow Men") |
| 2006 | Surviving Disaster | David Sheahan | Episode: "Fastnet Yacht Race" |
| 2006 | Agatha Christie's Marple: The Sittaford Mystery | Stanley Kirkwood | TV movie |
| 2006 | Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire | Ofonius Tigellinus | Episode: "Nero" |
| 2007 | Lewis | Hugh Mallory | Episode: "Expiation" |
| 2007 | The Last Days of the Raj | Lord Mountbatten | TV movie |
| 2007 | Clapham Junction | Julian Rowan | TV movie |
| 2007 | Little Devil | Adrian Bishop | TV mini-series, Episode: "Episode #1.3" |
| 2007 | Impact Earth | Josh Hayden | TV movie |
| 2008 | A Risk Worth Taking | Patrick Trenchard | TV film |
| 2008 | Agatha Christie's Poirot | Andrew Restarick | Episode: "Third Girl" |
| 2010 | Midsomer Murders | Edward Milton | Episode: "The Made-to-Measure Murders" |
| 2011 | Secret Diary of a Call Girl | Henry | Episode: "Episode #4.4" |
| 2012 | Titanic | J. Bruce Ismay | TV series, 4 episodes |
| 2012 | The Best Possible Taste | Wilfred De'Ath | BBC TV movie |
| 2013 | The Great Train Robbery | John Wheater | TV mini-series, Episode: A Copper's Tale |
| 2014 | Law & Order: UK | Charles Hutton | Episode: Bad Romance |
| 2014 | Endeavour | ACC Clive Deare | Episode: Neverland |
| 2015 | Death in Paradise | Elias Thomson | Episode: Stab in the Dark |
| 2015 | Strike Back | Charles Ridley | TV series, 5 episodes |
| 2016–2017 | Casualty | Archie Grayling | 6 episodes |
| 2016 | Churchill's Secret | Brendan Bracken | TV movie |
| 2017–2018 | Poldark | Lord Falmouth | 10 episodes |
| 2018 | Father Brown | Sefton Scott | Episode: "The Cat of Mastigatus" |
| 2024 | The Famous Five | Mr Vincent | Episode: "Mystery at the Prospect Hotel" |