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Simon Callow

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Simon Philip Hugh Callow, CBE (born June 15, 1949 in London, England) is a highly-regarded British actor of stage, film and television, and a biographer of Orson Welles and Charles Laughton.

Callow studied at Queen's University, Belfast before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre, London. He was already a successful stage actor before making his film debut in a minor role in Amadeus in 1984 (having played Mozart in the original stage production at the Royal National Theatre).

By his thirties, Callow was playing character and often comic parts. He starred in several series of the Channel 4 sitcom, Chance in a Million, as Tom Chance, an eccentric individual to whom coincidences happened regularly. Ironically, roles like this and his part in Four Weddings and a Funeral brought him a wider audience than his many critically-acclaimed stage appearances. At the same time, he was successful both as a director and as a writer — mostly of works about acting.

One of Callow's best-known works is Love Is Where It Falls, a poignant analysis of his eleven-year relationship with Peggy Ramsay, a prominent theatrical agent. He has also written extensively about Charles Dickens, whom he has played in a one-man show on stage, The Mystery of Charles Dickens and reading from Dickens' work, and on television several times, including in The Unquiet Dead, a 2005 episode of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who.

Callow is also one of the most prominent openly gay actors in Britain.

In 1999, he was awarded the CBE for his services to acting.

His first TV role was in Carry On Laughing episode Orgy and Bess, in 1975, but it was apparently cut from the final print.

He appeared with Saeed Jaffrey in 1994 British television series Little Napoleons.

In 2004, he appeared on a Comic Relief episode of Little Britain for charity causes.

He has starred as Count Fosco, the villian of Wilkie Collins's novel The Woman in White, in film (1997) and on stage (2005, in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in West End).

Selected filmography

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