- William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright now widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. His surviving works include at least 38 plays, two long narrative poems and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, and at 18 married Anne Hathaway, …
- Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Nunn CBE (born 14 January, 1940) is an English theatre and film director. He has held both the posts of Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Director of the Royal National Theatre, following in the footsteps of Sir Peter Hall. He was knighted by the Queen in 2002. He was born in Ipswich, England and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, where he began his stage career. In 1968, he was appointed Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, …
- Peter Hall
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE (born 22 November, 1930) is an English theatre and film director. He was born in Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, England and attended The Perse School, Cambridge. Hall learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his National Service. He produced and acted in several productions while at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1953 from St Catharine's College.
- Peter Brook
Peter Brook is a British theatre and film director and innovator, and considered one of the most influential and revered directors and theatre theorists.
- Adrian Noble
Adrian Keith Noble (born 19 July 1950) was the Artistic Director and Chief Exectutive of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003. After he graduated from the Chichester High School he studied at the university of Bristol. He began his professional career as a director at the London Drama Centre. In 1976 he moved on to the Bristol Old Vic and working at the same time for the TV. From 1980 till 1981 he worked at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, …
- John Barton
John Barton, (26 November 1928-), is a noted English stage director whose career has been almost entirely with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Born in London, the son of a senior civil servant, Barton went to Eton and Cambridge. He remained at King's as Fellow and lay dean where he became an all-round theatre man. In 1960, when he was asked by Peter Hall to join him in running the newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
- Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson CBE (7 April 1934 - 9 February 2007) was a Scottish actor best known for playing the machiavellian conservative politician Francis Urquhart in the "House of Cards" trilogy for the BBC. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989.
- David Warner
David Warner (born July 29, 1941) is an Emmy Award-winning English actor who is known for playing sinister or evil characters.
- Terry Hands
Terence David ('Terry') Hands (born 9 January, 1941) is a leading British stage director. He was born in Aldershot, and studied at Woking Grammar School, University of Birmingham and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1964 he established the Liverpool Everyman. Terry joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 to run the Company's touring group, Theatregoround. He become joint Artistic Director with Trevor Nunn in 1978, and in 1986 chief executive.
- Roger Rees
Roger Rees (born on May 4, 1944) is a British-American actor.
- David Suchet
David Suchet OBE (born May 2, 1946) is an English actor best known for his television portrayal of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in the television series "Agatha Christie's Poirot".
- Jim Broadbent
James Broadbent (born May 24, 1949) is an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning English theatre, film and television actor.
- Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist and essayist. He first achieved fame with his second novel, "Midnight's Children" (1981), which won the Booker Prize. Much of his early fiction is set at least partly on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism, while a dominant theme of his work is the long, rich and often fraught story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the East and the West.
- Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce (born June 1, 1947) is a Welsh film, television, and stage actor who has starred in such films as "Brazil" and the "Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy".
- Juliet Stevenson
Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson (born October 30, 1956) is an English actress. Stevenson was born in Essex, England. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which led to a stage career starting in the early 1980s with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although she has gained fame through her television and film work, and has often undertaken roles for BBC radio, she is still primarily a stage actress.
- Tim Supple
Tim Supple is an English theatre and opera director, with a reputation for breathing new life into familiar stories. In 1993, Tim Supple was appointed the Artistic Director of the Young Vic, London. He has also worked with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2000, Supple was invited to direct "Hansel and Gretel" for Opera North. In 2003, he directed their production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute".
- Howard Davies
Howard Davies (born 1945) is a noted Welsh director, best known for his theatre work. He is currently associated drector of the National Theatre and was previously associate director of the Almeida and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has been nominated for three Tony awards: "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (1987), "The Iceman Cometh" (1999) and "Private Lives" (2002).
- Romola Garai
Romola Sadie Garai (born 6 August 1982) is an award-winning English actress.
- Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate CBE (born June 26, 1958) is a British scholar of Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He was educated at Sevenoaks School and the University of Cambridge. He was formerly a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and then King Alfred Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University before becoming Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at Warwick University.
- Francesca Annis
Francesca Annis (born May 14, 1945) is a British actress, particularly well known for her film and television appearances, most recently the BBC series, "Wives and Daughters" and "Deceit". Annis was born in London and was convent educated. She began acting professionally in her teens, and made her film debut in the 1950s. In 1967 she played Estella in a television adaptation of "Great Expectations". She also presented children's television programmes.
- Lindsay Duncan
Lindsay Vere Duncan (born 7 November 1950) is a Tony Award-winning Scottish actress. She is a noted stage actress, winning the Tony Award for "Private Lives". Duncan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in mostly unheralded theatre roles before graduating to television productions in the 1980s. These productions included "On Approval" (1982), "Reilly, Ace of Spies" (1983), …
- John Wood
John Wood, CBE, (born January 1, 1930) is an English actor. Wood was born in Derbyshire. Known as a stage actor, he has played extensively in Shakespeare, having joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s. He has also appeared in many of Tom Stoppard's plays; he won a Tony Award in 1976 for the role of Henry Carr in Stoppard's "Travesties", …
- Donald Sinden
Sir Donald Alfred Sinden, CBE (born Plymouth, 9 October 1923) is an English stage and film actor. A stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare Company he first acted at the Brighton Little Theatre (of which he later became President) in 1941 and broke into professional acting after appearing in revues for the armed forces during the Second World War. He subsequently appeared in many British films of the 1950s including "The Cruel Sea" and "Doctor in the House".
- Phyllida Lloyd
Phyllida Lloyd is an English theatre director. After graduating from Birmingham University in 1979, she spent five years working in BBC Television Drama. In 1985 she was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary to be Trainee Director at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. The following year she was appointed Associate Director at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, then in 1989 Associate Director of the Bristol Old Vic, …
- Charles Dance
Charles Dance OBE (born October 10 1946) is an English actor.
- David Lloyd
David Llewellyn Lloyd (d. 1996) was an English deer-stalker, metallurgist, ballistician and sporting rifle maker, of Northamptonshire, England and Glencassley in Sutherland, Scotland. After service in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, extensive deer stalking, and frequent rifle shooting visits to Bisley ranges, Lloyd established the David Lloyd & Co. riflemakers company (registered company 05202134) at Pipewell Hall in 1936, …
- Alex Jennings
Alex Jennings (born 10 May 1957) is an award-winning English actor best known for his appearance in "The Queen" (2006) in which he played the role of HRH The Prince of Wales.
- Elizabeth Spriggs
Elizabeth Spriggs (born September 18, 1929 in Buxton, Derbyshire, England) is a British character actress. Her longest role on British television was as Nan on "Shine on Harvey Moon". She has also appeared in "Doctor Who" and in the BBC dramatisations of "Our Mutual Friend" and "Martin Chuzzlewit" both by Charles Dickens and George Eliot's "Middlemarch".
- Alex Kingston
Alexandra Kingston (born March 11, 1963, in Epsom, Surrey) is an English actress best known for her role as Elizabeth Corday on the NBC medical drama "ER". Kingston grew up in Epsom, on the outskirts of London, the eldest of three daughters of a butcher and his German wife. Her mother's younger brother is actor Walter Renneisen. She was inspired to pursue acting by one of her teachers at the all-girls grammar school she attended as a child.
- William Gaunt
William Charles Anthony Gaunt (born 3 April 1937) is an English actor, sometimes credited as Bill Gaunt. After minor roles in series such as "Z Cars", "The Avengers", and "Edgar Wallace Mysteries" throughout the early 1960s, he found fame as the super-powered secret agent Richard Barrett in the 1968 British espionage/science fiction adventure series "The Champions".
- Robert Stephens
Sir Robert Stephens (14 July 1931 - 12 November 1995) was a leading actor in the early years of England's Royal National Theatre. Stephens was born in Bristol, England, and rose to become one of the most respected actors of his generation. By the 1960s he was regarded as the natural successor to Laurence Olivier. He and his third wife, actress Maggie Smith appeared together on stage and in film, notably in the film version of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969.
- Matthew Warchus
Matthew Warchus (born November 30 1965 is an English director and dramatist.
- Roger Allam
Roger Allam is an English actor, best known for his stage career. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of "Les Misérables". He has been nominated three times for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, winning once. He has also been nominated for, and won, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has also appeared in many radio dramas for the BBC. In 2001, he starred in BBC Radio 4's adaptation of "Les Misérables", …
- Jude Kelly
Judith Pamela Kelly OBE ([born [March 24]], 1954) is a noted theatre director and producer from Liverpool. She was awarded the OBE in 1997 for her services to the theatre. She is currently artistic director of the South Bank Centre and is developing the METAL studio in West Hampstead as an artistic centre. Outside of her theatre life she is chair of the arts, education and culture committee for the 2012 London Olympics.
- John Kane
John Kane (born 27 October 1945) is an actor. An associate actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Puck in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" alongside Ben Kingsley, Alan Howard and Frances de la Tour, before turning to comedy script writing. He began writing for Norman Wisdom and Terry Scott's sketch show "Scott On", before taking over the reigns on a project for Terry Scott and comic actress June Whitfield, …
- Michael Bogdanov
Michael Bogdanov (born December 15, 1938), is an English theatre director. Since the 1970s, Michael Bogdanov has established himself as one of Britain's leading theatre directors, from new works to modern reinterpretations of Shakespeare. Born in London of Russian and Welsh parents, Bogdanov was educated at the John Lyon School in Harrow-on-the-Hill, England, at Trinity College, Dublin, and in Germany and France.
- Richard Johnson
Richard Johnson (born July 30, 1927 in Upminster) is an English actor, writer and producer, who starred in several British films of the 1960s and has also had a distinguished stage career. Born in Upminster, England, Johnson trained at RADA and made his first professional appearances on stage with Sir John Gielgud's company. During the Second World War he served in the navy, and made his film debut in 1951.
- Desmond Barrit
Desmond Barrit (born October 19, 1944 in Morriston, Swansea, Wales) is a British actor who has starred in productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has also appeared at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and the Royal National Theatre.
- Samantha Bond
Samantha Bond (born November 27, 1961) is an English actress best known for her role as Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan. Married to Alexander Hanson and has two children Molly and Tom. She is also the sister of actress Abigail Bond.
- Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser (born 14 February 1952) is a British actor, he attended Moseley Grammar School and the University of Liverpool before going to RADA in 1977 where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor of his year. As an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) he has played many of Shakespeare's most demanding roles, including Troilus ("Troilus and Cressida"), Edgar ("King Lear"), Petruchio, Romeo and Richard III.