Toby Stephens

Biography

Date of Birth 21 April 1969, Middlesex Hospital, London, England, UK Height 5' 11" (1.80 m) Stephens, the son of actors Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, was born in London, England. He was educated at Aldro and Seaford College and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). He began his film career with the role of Othello in 1992's Orlando. He has since made regular appearances on television (including in The Camomile Lawn) and on stage. He has gained acclaim as a stage actor of distinction, notably playing the title role in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Coriolanus shortly after graduation from LAMDA; that same season he played Claudio in Measure for Measure for the RSC. He also played Stanley Kowalski in a West End production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and Hamlet in 2004. He has appeared on Broadway in Ring Round the Moon. He played the lead in the film Photographing Fairies and played Orsino in Trevor Nunn's film of Twelfth Night. In 2005 he played the role of a British army captain in the Indian movie, Mangal Pandey: The Rising, portraying events in the Indian rebellion of 1857. The following year he returned to India to play a renegade British East India Company officer in Sharpe's Challenge. In autumn 2006 he starred as Edward Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre (broadcast in the United States on PBS in early 2007) and The Wild West in February 2007 for the BBC in which he played General George Armstrong Custer in Custer's Last Stand. On 31 May 2007 The Guardian announced that Toby Stephens and his wife of six years, New Zealand actress Anna-Louise Plowman, had their first child, a son named Eli Alistair.[1] During the summer of 2007, Stephens played the role of Jerry in a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal under the direction of Roger Michell. Most recently, Stephens starred as Horner in Jonathan Kent's revival of William Wycherley's The Country Wife. The play was the inaugural production of The Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, which in addition to Stephens includes the actors Eileen Atkins, Patricia Hodge, David Haig and Ruthie Henshall. Various members of the Company are expected to star in upcoming productions at the Haymarket Theatre with various artistic directors. The formation of the Company is considered by many London theatre critics to be a bold move for West End theatre.[2] In December 2007, it was announced that Stephens would perform the role of James Bond in a BBC Radio 4 production of Ian Fleming's Dr. No, to be broadcast in Spring 2008. The production is reportedly the first radio dramatization of the novel. Stephens continues to prolifically narrate audiobooks and perform in radio dramas; between November 2007 and May 2008, he will have given 5 such performances. In February 2008, Fox Broadcasting Company gave the go-ahead to cast Stephens as the lead in a potential one hour, prime time U.S. television show, Inseparable, to be produced by Shaun Cassidy. Billed as a modern Jekyll and Hyde story, the show would feature a partially paralyzed forensic psychologist whose other personality is a charming criminal. Stephens' casting at this stage of production is highly unusual, because as of February 2008 Fox has not yet approved a script nor purchased a pilot for the show. Cassidy's completion of the script was delayed due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.[3]