Andrew Sachs

About:

Andreas Siegfried Sachs was born in 1930s Berlin. His family was Jewish and his father had the fortune and the foresight to escape Nazi Germany mere days before the Kristallnacht. The family settled in Britain and a few years later Andrew Sachs took to the British stage.

His early career featured such roles as Willie Walker in the 1962 BBC series The Six Proud Walkers and he became involved in John Cleese’s corporate training video company Video Arts which was to revolutionise the hitherto mind-numbingly boring world of business media training. In 1974 when Cleese was casting his new sit-com for the BBC Fawlty Towers he asked Sachs to play the role of the hapless foreign waiter, apparently considering making him German as this was more straightforward for Sachs. But what emerged was one of the most famous Spaniards since El Cid. The role of Manuel was to establish Sachs not only as a leading comic actor, confirmed by his roles in Blake Edwards’ The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Mel Brooks’ History of the World; Part I (1981) but as a ferociously good voice artist and much of his work since has been in the highly specialised area of voice over and commentary.

He lives in London with his wife Melody Lang and they have three children.

Selected Filmography: