Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West (born 19 June 1966) is an English actor, theatre director and voice actor. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor across theatre, film, television and radio. He often appears as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC about the Second World War. He plays Siegfried Farnon in the 2020 remake of the veterinary drama series "All Creatures Great and Small". Early life and education. West was born in London, the elder  son of actress and actor Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and the grandson of the actor Lockwood West. He has one brother. He was educated at Alleyn's School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he studied English Literature and was president of the Experimental Theatre Club. Career. Stage. West made his London stage debut in February 1989 at the Orange Tree Theatre, playing Michael in Cocteau's "Les Parents Terribles", of which critic John Thaxter wrote: "He invests the role with a warmth and validity that silences sniggers that could so easily greet a lesser performance of this difficult  role, and he lets us share the tumbling emotions of a juvenile torn between romantic first love and filial duty." Since then, West has appeared frequently on stage; he played Valentine in the first ever production of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" at the National Theatre in 1993 and later spent two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company playing the title roles in "Richard II" and "Hamlet", both directed by Steven Pimlott. In 2002, West made his stage directorial debut with "The Lady's Not for Burning" at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester. He succeeded Michael Grandage as artistic director of Sheffield  Theatres from 2005–2007. During his time, as artistic director West revived the controversial "The Romans in Britain" and also directed "As You Like It" as part of the RSC's Complete Works Festival. West left Sheffield when the theatre closed for refurbishment in 2007 and made his West End directorial debut with the first major revival of "Dealer's Choice" following its transferral to the Trafalgar Studios. He also continued his acting career: in 2007 he appeared alongside Toby Stephens and Dervla Kirwan in "Betrayal" at the Donmar Warehouse, In November 2008 he played Harry in the Donmar revival of  T. S. Eliot's "Family Reunion" and in 2009 he starred as Jeffrey Skilling in "Enron" by Lucy Prebble. His 2008 production of "Waste" at the Almeida Theatre was chosen by "The Times" as one of its "Productions of the Decade". From November 2012 to January 2013 he appeared as Astrov in a production of "Uncle Vanya" at the Vaudeville Theatre. He played Ivanov and Trigorin in the Chichester Festival Theatre's Young Chekhov Season from September 2015, alongside Nina Sosanya, Anna Chancellor, and James McArdle. Film. West appeared in the film "Reunion" (1989) with Jason Robards and Christien Anholt  as an aristocratic boy who befriends the son of a Jewish doctor in 1930’s Germany. West played the lower-middle-class clerk Leonard Bast in the Merchant Ivory film adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel "Howards End" (1992), featuring with Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Anthony Hopkins. For this role, he was nominated for best supporting actor at the 1993 BAFTA Film Awards. West appeared with Thompson in the film "Carrington" (1995). His film career has continued with roles in films such as Franco Zeffirelli's "Jane Eyre", "Notting Hill", "Iris" and "Van Helsing". In 2004, he  appeared in the year's highest rated mini-series on German television, "Die Nibelungen", which was released in the United States in 2006 as "". In 2012, he played King George VI in "Hyde Park on Hudson". Television. West has appeared in many long-running series: "Midsomer Murders", "Waking the Dead" and "Poirot" as well as one-off dramas. He played Anthony Blunt in "Cambridge Spies", a BBC production about the four British spies, starring alongside Toby Stephens (Philby), Tom Hollander (Burgess) and Rupert Penry-Jones (Maclean). He reprises his role as Blunt in "Olding" the premiere episode of the third  season of "The Crown" released in 2019. In 2006, he took the lead role in a BBC production of "Random Quest" adapted from the short story by John Wyndham and the next year played Edward Heath in "Margaret Thatcher – The Long Walk to Finchley", also for the BBC. In 2010 he played Peter Scabius in the televised adaptation of William Boyd's novel "Any Human Heart", while in 2011 he starred as Zak Gist in the ITV series "Eternal Law". In addition, he appeared in the BBC series "As Time Goes By" episode "We'll Always Have Paris" (1994) as  the character Terry. He plays Frank Edwards in the ITV drama "Mr Selfridge", and Sir Walter Pole in the 2015 BBC adaptation of "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell". He co-stars in the Channel Five series (broadcast in September 2020) "All Creatures Great and Small" as Siegfried Farnon. The programme was renewed for a second six-episode series, which began airing in September 2021, plus a Christmas special. A third season is currently in production. Radio. West is regularly heard on radio as a reader or reciter and has performed in many radio dramas, including "Otherkin" by Laura Wade, "Present  Laughter" by Noël Coward, Len Deighton's "Bomber", "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman, Michael Frayn's "Here" and "The Homecoming" as Lenny to Harold Pinter's Max. In 2011, he made his radio directing debut with a production of "Money" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton on BBC Radio 3. Personal life. West has appeared alongside his actor parents on several occasions: with his mother Prunella Scales in "Howards End" and "Stiff Upper Lips", and with his father Timothy West on stage in "A Number", "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". In two films ("Iris" in 2001 and the 1996  television film "Over Here"), Sam and his father have played the same character at different ages. In "Edward the Seventh" (1975), he and his brother Joseph played young sons of the title character, who was played by their father. In 2002, all three family members performed in Stravinsky's "The Soldiers Tale" at the St Magnus Festival on Orkney and in 2006 they gave a rehearsed reading of the Harold Pinter play "Family Voices" as part of the Sheffield Theatres Pinter season. West became the patron of Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus in February 2008, having been the narrator for a concert  of theirs in February 2002. He is also a patron of London children's charity Scene & Heard, Eastside Educational Trust and Mousetrap Theatre projects. While at university, West was a member of the Socialist Workers Party and later briefly the Socialist Alliance. West has been politically active for many years; he was a critic of the New Labour government of Tony Blair and their involvement in the Iraq War. On 26 March 2011, he spoke at the TUC March for the Alternative. West has written essays on "Richard II" for the Cambridge University Press series "Players of Shakespeare", on "Hamlet  for Michael Dobson's CUP study Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today" and on Shakespeare and Love and Voice and Radio for BBC Radio 3. He has also published articles on Harold Pinter, on Caryl Churchill and on the Shipping Forecast. He frequently writes and speaks in public about arts funding. West has collected stamps since childhood and owns more than 200 Two Shilling Blues. In 2013, he was one of the judges for the Forward Prizes for Poetry. In December 2014, he appeared on two programmes for "Christmas University Challenge", as part of a team of alumni from Lady Margaret  Hall, Oxford. West is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a trustee and previous Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts. He was a member of the council of the British Actors' Union Equity from 1996–2000 and 2008–2014. He is a keen birdwatcher. In 2007, West moved in with playwright Laura Wade, but in 2011 the couple temporarily split up. In 2013, West was cast in a minor role in "The Riot Club", the film version of Wade's successful play, "Posh" and in 2014 the couple had a daughter. In August 2017, the couple had  a second daughter. West is a supporter AFC Wimbledon. Filmography. Television. He narrated the Yorkshire Television documentary "The SS in Britain" for director Julian Hendy in 1999, and considering his role in the ITV drama series "Mr Selfridge", he was the voiceover for "Secrets of Selfridges" (PBS) in 2014. Audiobooks, reciting and work with musicians. West has recorded over one hundred audiobooks, among which are the Shakespeare plays "All's Well That Ends Well", "Coriolanus", "Henry V", "The Merchant of Venice", "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Much Ado About Nothing", "Richard II" and "Macbeth" (directed by Steven Berkoff), the Wind  on Fire trilogy by William Nicholson ("The Wind Singer", "Slaves of the Mastery" and "Firesong"), the Arthur trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland ("The Seeing Stone", "At the Crossing Places" and" King of the Middle March"), five books by Sebastian Faulks ("Charlotte Gray", "Birdsong", "The Girl at the Lion d'Or", "Human Traces" and "A Possible Life"), four by Michael Ridpath ("Trading Reality", "Final Venture", "Free to Trade", and "The Marketmaker"), two by George Orwell ("Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Homage to Catalonia"), two by Mary Wesley ("An Imaginative Experience" and "Part of the Furniture"), two by Robert Goddard ("Closed Circle" and "In  Pale Battalions") and several compilations of poetry "(Realms of Gold: Letters and Poems of John Keats", "Bright Star", "The Collected Works of Shelley", "Seven Ages", "Great Narrative Poems of the Romantic Age" and "A Shropshire Lad)". Also "Faust", "Bomber", "Doctor Who: The Vengeance of Morbius", "Empire of the Sun", "Brighton Rock", "Fair Stood the Wind for France", "Fluke", "Great Speeches in History", "How Proust Can Change Your Life", "Lady Windermere's Fan", "Peter Pan", "The Alchemist", "The Day of the Triffids", "The Hairy Hands", "The Lives of Christopher Chant", "The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous", "The Queen's Man", "The  Solitaire Mystery", "The Swimming Pool Library", "The Two Destinies", "The Velveteen Rabbit", "The Way I Found Her", "The Way to Dusty Death", "The Woodlanders", "Under the Net", "Wuthering Heights" and Philip Pullman's "Grimm Tales for Young and Old". In June 2012, West recorded an English narration of "The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My" by Tove Jansson for an interactive audiobook developed by Spinfy and published by Sort of Books. In May 2015, West's reading of "Brighton Rock" was chosen as one of 'The 20 best audiobooks of all time' by Carole Mansur of the Daily Telegraph . As a reciter West has worked with all the major British orchestras, as well as the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.. Works include Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" and "The Soldier's Tale", Prokofiev's "Eugene Onegin", Beethoven's "Egmont", Schoenburg's "Ode To Napoleon", Strauss' "Enoch Arden", Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals", Bernstein's "Kaddish", Walton's "Façade" and "Henry V", "Night Mail" and "The Way to the Sea" by Britten and Auden, the world premieres of "Concrete" by Judith Weir at the Barbican and Howard Goodall's "Jason and  the Argonauts" at the Royal Albert Hall and the UK premiere of Jonathan Harvey's final piece "Weltethos" at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham. In 2007 West made his New York recital debut in the first performance of "Little Red Violin" by Anne Dudley and Steven Isserlis. In November 2010, West performed a new English translation of Grieg's complete incidental music to Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt" with the Southampton Philharmonic Choir at Southampton Guildhall. He has performed at the Proms six times, including the suite version of "Henry V" at the 2002 Last Night of the Proms. He has  also appeared with the Nash Ensemble, the Raphael Ensemble, The Hebrides Ensemble, Ensemble 360 and the Lindsay, Dante and Endellion Quartets at the Wigmore Hall, London. Recordings include Prokofief's "Eugene Onegin" with Sinfonia 21 and Edward Downes, "Salad Days" and Walton's "Henry V" with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin. As a choral singer, West has participated in three Choir of London tours to Palestine: in May 2006, when he also gave poetry readings as part of the concert programme; in April 2007 when he directed "The Magic Flute". and in September 2013 (see below). In 2013 , the centenary year of Benjamin Britten, West narrated the Britten/Auden film score "Night Mail" with the Nash Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall and later added "Coal Face, God’s Chillun, The Peace of Britain, The Way to the Sea" and "The King's Stamp" with the Aurora Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth and Fairfield Halls. In June he played God in Britten's "Noye’s Fludde" in Harrogate. In July he appeared in a Proms Plus broadcast discussing Britten's setting of poetry. In September he toured Palestine with the Choir of London as staff director of a new  opera based on Britten's "Hymn to St Cecilia" and sang in Britten's "St Nicolas". In October, he narrated the concert world premiere of "Britten in America" for the Hallé orchestra, which was released on CD together with West's recordings of speeches to Britten's incidental music for Auden and Isherwood's play "The Ascent of F6" (the disc, "Britten to America", was later nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium). He also toured a program of Britten cabaret songs and Auden poems across the UK with Ruthie Culver and the UtterJazz Quartet. In June  2013 he appeared in the video for "Handyman Blues" by Billy Bragg, directed by Johnny Vegas. On 14 July 2017, one month after the Grenfell Tower fire, BBC's "Newshour" programme invited West to read out an excerpt from a letter written by an anonymous firefighter giving a personal account of the fire scene and his inner thoughts on duty that night. In 2020, West appeared on the album "From The Ground Up": an ensemble led by Hugo Ticciati improvised over Henry Purcell chaconne bass lines while West read Shakespeare and rapper Baba Israel improvised. The album won a 2020  Gramophone Award for Best Concept Album. Awards and nominations. As actor As reader Samuel West has received nine AudioFile Earphones Awards for his narration: "The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham (1996), "Peter Pan" by J.M.Barrie (1997), "Charlotte Gray" by Sebastian Faulks (1999), "The Way I Found Her" by Rose Tremain (2000), "The Swimming Pool Library" by Alan Hollinghurst (2007), "Faust" by Goethe (2011), "A Shropshire Lad" by A. E. Housman (2011), "A Possible Life" by Sebastian Faulks (2012) and Philip Pullman's "Grimm Tales for Young and Old" (2013) As director