Simon Callow

Born: June 1949
Where. London, England

An actor for whom the term "luvvie" appears to have been created, you always expect Shakespearean stalwart Callow to retain his own table at the Ivy.

However, his plummily cartoonish persona has also shone in a wealth of roles ranging from A Room With A View to Four Weddings and a Funeral.

A deliciously rich character actor, Callow is the son of a secretary and businessman and attended the London Oratory School.

He then went on to study at the Queen's University of Belfast before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre in London.

After years on the stage he first won notice in 1979 when he originated the starring role of the abrasively immature Mozart in the National Theatre's premiere production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus.

He went on to create a bevy of mostly comic supporting characters, notably in the Merchant-Ivory films based on EM Forster novels: A Room With a View as the Reverend Mr Beebe and Maurice as schoolmaster Mr Dulcie.

Callow was also featured in Mr and Mrs Bridge and played Meryl Streep's sharp-tongued film director in Mike Nichols' Postcards From the Edge in 1990.

He made an uncredited appearance as a music lecturer in James Ivory's well-received period drama Howards End and played one half of a gay couple in that rare British success, Four Weddings and A Funeral.

In a complete departure, he showed up in the Jean-Claude Van Damme action feature Street Fighter as a pompous official of an international organization.

He remained in Hollywood for a far more eagerly anticipated commercial venture: playing the hissable villain in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

Woody Allen cast him in 1998's ensemble comedy Bedrooms and Hallways and he went on to play Sir Edmund Tilney in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love.

In 2001, he appeared as a pompous UN official in No Man's Land and as an opera singer in the children's movie Thunderpants.

In 2003, he played the King of Anatolia in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things and also starred in the big screen adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera.

He salso tarred alongside the acclaimed American TV drama Angels in America alongside Meryl Streep and Al Pacino.

He is also the author of the non-fiction books, Being an Actor, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor, Shooting the Actor and Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu.

Recent big screen working includes the role of Professor Haddo/Aleister Crowley in Chemical Wedding.