Simon Ward

Biography

Simon Ward (born London, October 19, 1941) is an English stage and film actor. The son of a car dealer, Ward had a pretty fair idea of what he wanted to do with his life from an early age. He was educated at Alleyn's School, London, the home of the National Youth Theatre, which he joined at age 13 and stayed with for eight years. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he made his professional stage debut with the Northampton repertory in 1963 and his London theatrical bow one year later in The 4th of June. After the Royal Academy, he worked in repertory in Northampton, Birmingham, and Oxford and occasionally in London's West End. His big break in theater came in 1967 when he played in Joe Orton's "Loot", which led to a number of small film and television roles. All of Ward's major film roles were in the 1970s. He starred with some of the finest actors and directors of the time and in some of the most prestigious and popular films made during that decade. He has made few movies since the 1970s , although he did have a major role in the Ralph Fiennes version of Wuthering Heights made in the early 1990s, which also starred Ward's daughter, Sophie Ward. In 1972, he played the title role in Young Winston (Churchill), and the following year played the Duke of Buckingham in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973). He was also seen as a fictional Nazi functionary (the sympathetic one, with whom the audience is supposed to identify) in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973). Later film roles ran the gamut from author/veterinarian James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small (1974) to Zor-El in Supergirl (1984). In 1995 he took over Stephen Fry's role in Cell Mates, after Fry left the production shortly after opening. He currently appears as Sir Monty Everard in the BBC television series Judge John Deed. Persistant rumours suggest his first film appearance was an uncredited role as one of the sociopathic students in Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968) however this is not true.