Sir Derek George Jacobi (; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen as well as for his work at the Royal National Theatre, he has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a British Academy Television Award, two Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.

Jacobi started his professional acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the founding members of the National Theatre. Jacobi received the Laurence Olivier Award, for the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac in 1983 and Malvolio in Twelfth Night in 2009. He also won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in 1985.

On television, he portrayed Claudius in the BBC series I, Claudius (1976), for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. He received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for The Tenth Man (1988), and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Frasier (2001). He also took roles in ITV drama series Cadfael (1994–1998), the HBO film The Gathering Storm (2002), the sitcom Vicious (2013–2016), in BBC's Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), and the Netflix series The Crown in 2019.

Jacobi has acted in numerous films including Othello (1965), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Hamlet (1996), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Riddle (2007), My Week with Marilyn (2011), Anonymous (2011), Cinderella (2015), and Murder on the Orient Express (2017). Jacobi portrayed Senator Gracchus in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) and Gladiator II (2024). Jacobi has also earned two Screen Actors Guild Awards along with the ensemble cast for Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010).

Early life and education

Derek George Jacobi was born on 22 October 1938 in Leytonstone, Essex<!-- Do not change to London, Leytonstone was in Essex in 1938-->, England (now part of East London), the only child of Alfred George Jacobi (1910–1993), who ran a tobacconists-cum-sweet shop in Chingford, and Daisy Gertrude (née Masters; 1910–1980), a secretary. His patrilineal great-grandfather had emigrated from Germany to England during the 19th century. He also has a distant Huguenot ancestor. His family was working-class, and Jacobi describes his childhood as happy. When he was nine he contracted rheumatic fever and had to spend the next 18 months in bed. and Trevor Nunn. During his studies at Cambridge, Jacobi played many parts including Hamlet, which was taken on a tour to Switzerland, where he met Richard Burton. As a result of his performance of Edward II at Cambridge, Jacobi was invited to become a member of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre immediately upon his graduation in 1960.

Career

1959–1979: Stage debut and breakthrough

thumb|left|170px|[[Laurence Olivier discovered Derek Jacobi, inviting him to join the Royal National Theatre.]]

Jacobi's talent was recognised by Laurence Olivier, who invited the young actor back to London to become one of the founding members of the new National Theatre, even though at the time Jacobi was relatively unknown. by mocking his Shakespearean background in the television sitcom Frasier episode "The Show Must Go Off", in which he played the hammy, loud, untalented Jackson Hedley, a television star with a misguided belief that he deserves a revival of his stage career. In 2002, Jacobi toured Australia in The Hollow Crown with Sir Donald Sinden, Ian Richardson and Dame Diana Rigg. Jacobi also played the role of Senator Gracchus in Gladiator and starred in the 2002 miniseries The Jury. He is also the narrator for the BBC children's series In the Night Garden....

In 2003, Jacobi was involved with Scream of the Shalka, a webcast based on the science fiction series Doctor Who. He played the voice of the Doctor's nemesis the Master alongside Richard E. Grant as the Doctor. In the same year, he also appeared in Deadline, an audio drama also based on Doctor Who. Therein he played Martin Bannister, an ageing writer who makes up stories about "the Doctor", a character who travels in time and space, the premise being that the series had never made it on to television. Jacobi later followed this up with an appearance in the Doctor Who episode "Utopia" (June 2007); he appears as the kindly Professor Yana, who by the end of the episode is revealed to be the Master. Jacobi admitted to Doctor Who Confidential he had always wanted to be on the show: "One of my ambitions since the '60s has been to take part in a Doctor Who. The other one is Coronation Street. So I've cracked Doctor Who now. I'm still waiting for Corrie."

In 2004, Jacobi starred in Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, in an acclaimed production, which transferred to the Gielgud Theatre in London in January 2005. The London production of Don Carlos gathered rave reviews. Also in 2004, he starred as Lord Teddy Thursby in the first of the four-part BBC series The Long Firm, based on Jake Arnott's novel of the same name. In Nanny McPhee (2005), he played the role of the colourful Mr. Wheen, an undertaker. He played the role of Alexander Corvinus in the 2006 action-horror film Underworld: Evolution.

In March 2006, BBC Two broadcast Pinochet in Suburbia, a docudrama about former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the attempts to extradite him from Great Britain; Jacobi played the leading role. In September 2007, it was released in the US, retitled Pinochet's Last Stand. In 2006, he appeared in the children's movie Mist, the tale of a sheepdog puppy, he also narrated this movie. In July–August 2006, he played the eponymous role in A Voyage Round My Father at the Donmar Warehouse, a production which then transferred to the West End.

thumb|Jacobi signing autographs after his performance in [[Twelfth Night, London, 2009]]

In February 2007, The Riddle, directed by Brendan Foley and starring Jacobi, Vinnie Jones, and Vanessa Redgrave, was screened at Berlin EFM. Jacobi plays twin roles: first a present-day London tramp and then the ghost of Charles Dickens. In March 2007, the BBC's children's programme In the Night Garden... started its run of one hundred episodes, with Jacobi as the narrator. He played Nell's grandfather in ITV's Christmas 2007 adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop, and returned to the stage to play Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (2009) for the Donmar Warehouse at Wyndham's Theatre in London. The role won him the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. He appears in five 2009 films: Morris: A Life with Bells On, Hippie Hippie Shake, Endgame, Adam Resurrected and Charles Dickens's England. In 2010, he returned to I, Claudius, as Augustus in a radio adaptation. In 2011, he was part of a medieval epic, Ironclad, which also starred James Purefoy and Paul Giamatti, as the ineffectual Reginald de Cornhill, castellan of Rochester castle.

Jacobi starred in Michael Grandage's production of King Lear (London, 2010), giving what The New Yorker called "one of the finest performances of his distinguished career".

In 2012, he appeared in Titanic: Blood and Steel and in November 2012, he starred in the BBC series Last Tango in Halifax. In 2013, he starred in the second series of Last Tango, and in 2014, the third series. In 2013, Jacobi starred alongside Ian McKellen in the ITV sitcom Vicious as Stuart Bixby, the partner to Freddie Thornhill, played by McKellen. On 23 August 2013, the show was renewed for a six-episode second series which began airing in June 2015. The show ended in December 2016, with a Christmas special. In 2015, Jacobi appeared as the King in Disney’s live-action version of “Cinderella".

Since 2017, Jacobi has again portrayed The Master in several box set series for Big Finish Productions, collectively entitled The War Master. In 2018, he played the Bishop of Digne in the BBC miniseries Les Misérables. In 2018, Jacobi received the World United Creator – Platinum Demiurge Award for his tremendous contribution to uniting and promoting world literature based on his efforts to introduce William Shakespeare into modern cinema. In 2019, he reprised the role of the emperor Claudius in Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans. In 2022, Jacobi appeared in Allelujah, a film adaptation of Alan Bennett's play of the same name directed by Richard Eyre, which also starred Jennifer Saunders, Bally Gill, Russell Tovey, David Bradley, and Judi Dench.

Personal life

Jacobi is an agnostic. a theatre director, with whom he has been in a relationship since the late 1970s. The couple live in West Hampstead, northwest London.

Community

Along with his Vicious co-star Ian McKellen, he was a Grand Marshal of the 46th New York City Gay Pride March in 2015. Jacobi <!--is a patron of the De Vere Society, and--> has given an address to the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre promoting de Vere as the Shakespeare author and wrote forewords to two books on the subject in 2004 and 2005.

In 2007, Jacobi and fellow Shakespearean actor and director Mark Rylance initiated a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, to encourage new research into the question. In 2011, Jacobi accepted a role in the film Anonymous, about the Oxfordian theory, starring Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave. In the film Jacobi narrates the Prologue and Epilogue, set in modern-day New York, while the film proper is set in Elizabethan England. Jacobi said that making the film was "a very risky thing to do", stating "the orthodox Stratfordians are going to be apoplectic with rage".

  • 1989: Knight 1st class of the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark)
  • 1994: Knight Bachelor, for services to Drama (United Kingdom)

See also

  • List of British actors
  • List of Oxfordian theory supporters
  • List of Primetime Emmy Award winners

References

  • "Jacobi, Sir Derek (George)", Who's Who 2008, A & C Black, 2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 22 October 2008.