Sir Derek Jacobi CBE

About:

Derek Jacobi was born in the East End of London and began his extraordinarily impressive career with an early leap to prominence when he played Hamlet for the National Youth Theatre. His successes on the stage whilst at Cambridge University led to a season at the highly regarded Birmingham Repertory Theatre where his performance as Henry VIII came to the attention of Laurence Olivier who invited him to join his newly formed National Theatre as a founder member, albeit as understudy and general spear-carrier. In truly fairy-tale style, the actor whose parts he was understudying, Jeremy Brett, got the call from Hollywood and left Jacobi to take over and become one of the main pillars of the company, and from there of the British theatre.

Since then his career has been immense. The theatrical pre-eminence continued with, amongst other highlights, the award laden 1982 season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in which he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Peer Gynt, Propsero in The Tempest and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (which transferred to Broadway a year later winning Jacobi a Tony for the role). In 1986 his performance in the role of Alan Turing in the West End hit Breaking the Code brought him further accolades, and the Broadway transfer brought him a further Tony nomination. He directed Kenneth Branagh in his 1988 production of Hamlet and became artistic director of Chichester Festival Theatre in 1995. His most recent theatrical highlights include Uncle Vanya on Broadway in 2000 and Don Carlos in the West End in 2005.

His television career has been equally influential. His first major role was as the iconically stammering Emperor in the 1976 BBC serial I Claudius, and many other major performances followed including his Emmy award-winning role opposite Anthony Hopkins in the 1988 production of Grahame Greene’s The Tenth Man, the medieval sleuth in the similarly global hit Cadfael (1994), and The Jury (2002).

On the bigger screen his major successes began with Oliver’s Othello (1965), and have, amongst many others included The Day of the Jackal (1973), The Odessa File (1974), Dead Again (1991), Gosford Park (2001), and The Golden Compass (2007).

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1985 and was Knighted in 1994. He lives in London with his partner, the actor Richard Clifford.

Selected Filmography:

Othello (1965)
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
The Odessa File (1974)
Dead Again (1991)
Gladiator (2000)
Gosford Park (2001)
The Golden Compass (2007)