Ben Daniels Biography

Ben Daniels (born 10 June 1964) is an English actor. Initially a celebrated stage actor, Daniels was nominated for Best Actor at the Evening Standard Awards for Best Supporting Actor in the Laurence Olivier Awards for Never the Sinner (1991), 900 Oneonta (1994), Best Actor in the M.E.N. Theatre Awards for Martin Yesterday (1998), and won the Olivier award in 2001 for his performance in the Arthur Miller play All My Sons.

In 2008, Daniels made his Broadway dbut in a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. In more recent years, Daniels has appeared on popular television series including Cutting It (2002-05), The Virgin Queen (2005), Law & Order: UK (2009-11), The Paradise (2013) and House of Cards (2013-14).

Early life

Daniels was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. His father was an engineer at Rolls-Royce and later a grocer, while his mother owned a children's clothes shop. He has recalled: "I was quite a shy child, but quite disruptive as well. I was very sneaky and underhanded."

Education

Daniels was educated at Manor Park School, a state comprehensive school in Nuneaton, near Coventry, in the English Midlands (since closed). According to Daniels, drama lessons at O-levels gave him a voice, and when he attended sixth form studies at Stratford College between 1980 and 1982, doing A-levels in theatre studies and English literature, he attended Royal Shakespeare Company performances. A fellow student recalled that Daniels, whom he knew as Dave, "was very serious about his work, and struck me as incredibly intelligent... you got the sense his mind was working; the cogs were ticking over". Daniels subsequently trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for three years.

Career

One of Daniels' earliest roles was as Justin Hayward, the lead singer of the Moody Blues, as a teenager in two of the band's music videos, "Your Wildest Dreams" (1986) and "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" (1988). In 1992, he made an appearance in the infamous plane crash episode "Cascade" of the television show Casualty, playing the co-pilot of the doomed plane. He has taken on parts in many British television dramas, such as Robin in The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), the Biblical character Jonathan in the 1997 Emmy-nominated TV film David, the philandering Finn Bevan in Cutting It (2002-2005), and Nicholas Brocklehurst in the BBC television miniseries The State Within (2006). The latter role was notable for an unexpected same-sex kiss between Daniels' character and another person. In 2008 he appeared in Lark Rise to Candleford, a BBC production based on three semi-autobiographical novels about the English countryside written by Flora Thompson.

Daniel has also played a number of real-life characters, such as German State Secretary Dr. Josef Bhler in Conspiracy, a 2001 dramatisation of the Wannsee Conference at which the Final Solution was endorsed. He also played the English author and journalist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, in Ian Fleming: Bondmaker (2005), as well as Sir Francis Walsingham in The Virgin Queen (2005) and English writer Saki in Who Killed Mrs De Ropp? (2007). In addition, he has made guest appearances in a number of British TV drama series, including Soldier Soldier (1992), A Touch of Frost (1992), Outside Edge (1994), and Spooks (2005).

Daniels may be most recognisable to American audiences for appearing in the 1996 gay film Beautiful Thing. Daniels portrayed Tony, boyfriend of Sandra, the protagonist Jamie's mother. In an independent film directed by Lavinia Currier titled Passion in the Desert (1997), Daniels played a French soldier named Augustin Robert. The film was nominated for a Golden Seashell award. Other feature films that Daniels has starred in are The Bridge (1992), I Want You (1998), Madeline (1998), and Doom (2005). He was offered roles in the 2000 releases The Patriot and Vertical Limit, but turned them down and stated that "the money was good, but it wasn't for me". On his Twitter account, Daniels confirms his brief appearance as a Resistance pilot in the upcoming Star Wars film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Daniels has said that he loves acting on stage because "it's tough and keeps you on your toes as an actor". He appeared in All's Well That Ends Well and As You Like It (1999-2000), and played Mercutio in a 1994 TV adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Other theatre credits include Waiting for Godot (1994) and 900 Oneonta (1994), which earned him a nomination for Best Actor at the Evening Standard Awards. He also acted in Martin Yesterday (1998), for which he was nominated as Best Actor in the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards, Naked (1998), Tales From Hollywood (2001), Three Sisters (2003), Iphigenia at Aulis (2004), The God of Hell (2005), and The Wild Duck (2005-2006). In 2006, Daniels appeared in Thrse Raquin as Laurent, for which a reviewer labelled his performance "riveting".

Daniels won the Best Supporting Actor award at the Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers' Choice Theatre Awards and the 25th Laurence Olivier Awards in 2001 for his performance in the Arthur Miller play All My Sons. He was first nominated for the latter award earlier in his career, in 1991, for his performance as murderer Richard Loeb in the play Never the Sinner at the Playhouse Theatre. In 2008, Daniels fulfilled a lifetime ambition when he made his Broadway dbut, headlining as the Vicomte de Valmont in a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The show opened on 1 May 2008. Daniels was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his role.

Personal life

Daniels is openly gay and lives in south London. He once remarked: "Out? I've never been in." He lives with actor Ian Gelder. They began seeing each other during a 1993 production of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane. Daniels was already sure of his sexuality in his teens, although he did not discuss the matter with his parents because they did not have a very close emotional relationship. He was "cautious about mentioning it when I left drama school, because AIDS was terrifying everyone and there was a huge homophobic backlash". He decided to come out at the age of 24, while appearing in an all-star benefit performance of Martin Sherman's Bent.

Daniels said in an interview: "Homophobia is still shockingly prevalent in film and TV. I know I've lost work because of being gay, and it is always an issue. Even on a serious BBC Two drama, there will be some suit in some office going, "Hmmm, isn't he a poof?" I don't consider myself politically gay, but whenever I catch a whiff of that now, I'm on it like a ton of bricks." In 2007, Daniels was ranked number 79 in the annual Pink List of 100 influential gay and lesbian people in Britain published by The Independent on Sunday, down from number 47 in 2006.

In his spare time, he is an amateur painter and a practitioner of Ashtanga yoga.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1987	Wish You Were Here	Policeman
1991	The Lost Language of Cranes	Robin
1992	The Bridge	Rogers
1993	Rwendo	Marti	Short film
1995	Beautiful Thing	Tony
1998	Passion in the Desert	Augustin Robert
	I Want You	DJ Bob
	Madeline	Leopold
1999	Fanny and Elvis	Andrew
2001	Married / Unmarried	Danny
	Conspiracy	Dr. Josef Bhler
2002	Fogbound	Leo
2005	Doom	Eric "Goat" Fantom
2013	Jack the Giant Slayer	Fumm
2014	Locke	Gareth
	Luna	Grant	Filmed in 2007
2016	The Exception	Colonel Sigurd von Ilsemann	Adaptation of Alan Judd's 2003 novel, The Kaiser's Last Kiss
	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	Resistance Pilot

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1987	One By One	Student	Episode: "The Elephant and the Kangaroo"?
1988	The Modern World: Ten Great Writers	Hans Castorp	Episode: "Thomas Mann"
	Wall of Tyranny	Streimer
	Scene	Adrian	Episode: "The Crossing"
1989	The Paradise Club	DC Webster	Episodes: "Family Favours" and "Unfrocked in Babylon"
	Capital City	Colin de Seincourt	Episode: "Max in Trouble"
1990	Drop the Dead Donkey	Jack Davenport	Episode: "Old Father Time"
	The Fabulous Singlettes	Brian
1992	Casualty	First Officer Graham Marda	Episode: "Cascade"
	Soldier Soldier	Capt. Andy Wright	Episode: "The Last Post"
	A Touch of Frost	Roger Massie	Episode: "Conclusions"
1993	The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries	Norman Cubitt	Episode: "Death at the Bar"
1994	Romeo and Juliet	Mercutio
	Outside Edge	Alex Harrington	5 episodes
	W.S.H.	Kleinman
1996	Truth or Dare	Ben
1997	David	Jonathan
1998	Silent Witness	Owen Johnson	Episode: "Brothers in Arms"
1999	Aristocrats	Lord Kildare
2000	Britannic	Townsend
2002-2005	Cutting It	Finn Bevan
2003	Real Men	DI Matthew Fenton
2004	Agatha Christie's Marple	Alfred Crackenthorpe	Episode: "4.50 to Paddington"
2005	Ian Fleming: Bondmaker	Ian Fleming
	Spooks	Oleg Korsakov	Episode: "The Russian"
	The Virgin Queen	Francis Walsingham
2006	The State Within	Nicholas Brocklehurst
2007	Who Killed Mrs De Ropp?	Saki
2008	Lark Rise to Candleford	Rushton	1 episode
	The Passion	Caiaphas
2009-2011	Law & Order: UK	James Steel
2009	The Last Days of Lehman Brothers	John Thain
2011	Women in Love	Will Brangwen
	Moving On	John Murphy	Episode: "The Poetry of Silence"
	Merlin	Tristan	2 episodes
2013-2014	House of Cards	Adam Galloway	7 episodes
2013	The Wipers Times	Lt. Colonel Howfield
	The Paradise	Tom Weston	8 episodes
2014	Kids Who Kill	Narrator	TV Documentary
	Jamaica Inn	Francis Davey
2015	Virtuoso	Emperor Joseph II	TV Pilot
	Casanova	Franois-Joachim de Bernis	TV Pilot
	Flesh and Bone	Paul Grayson	8 episodes
2016	The Hollow Crown	Duke of Buckingham	Episodes: "Henry VI, Part Two" & "Richard III"
	The Exorcist	Father Marcus Keane

Theatre

Year(s) of appearance	Performance	Role	Awards and nominations
1985	The Bronts of Haworth by Alan Ayckbourn Scarborough, North Yorkshire	James Feather
	Family Circles (1970) by Alan Ayckbourn Scarborough, North Yorkshire	James
1986	The Winter's Tale (1623) by William Shakespeare Birmingham Repertory Theatre	Florizel
	Something Wicked This Way Comes based on the 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury Everyman Theatre, Liverpool	William Holloway
	The Hypochondriac Leicester	Cleante
	Electra (probably after 413 BC) by Euripides Leicester	Pylades
1987	Way Out of Order Haymarket, Leicester	Sean
	All's Well That Ends Well (1601-1608) by William Shakespeare Leicester	Bertram
1988	The Rain Gathering Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
	The Tutor (1774) by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz Old Vic, London	Bollwerk
1989	Bent (1979) by Martin Sherman One-night benefit for Stonewall, London	Wolf
1991	Never the Sinner by John Logan Playhouse Theatre, London	Richard Loeb	Best Supporting Actor, 15th Laurence Olivier Awards (nominated) (1991)
	Pride and Prejudice based on Jane Austen's 1813 book Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester	George Wickham
1993	Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) by Joe Orton Greenwich Theatre, London	Sloane
	Cracks The King's Head Theatre, London	Gideon
1994	Waiting for Godot (1948-1949) by Samuel Beckett Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London	Lucky
	900 Oneonta by David Beaird Old Vic and Ambassadors Theatre, London	Tiger	Best Actor, Evening Standard Awards (nominated) (1994)
1998	Martin Yesterday Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester	Matt	Best Actor, M.E.N. Theatre Awards (nominated) (1998)
	Naked Almeida Theatre and Playhouse Theatre, London	Franco
1999-2000	As You Like It (1599 or 1600) by William Shakespeare Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; and Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London	Orlando
2001	All My Sons (1947) by Arthur Miller Cottesloe and Lyttelton Theatres, Royal National Theatre, London	Chris Keller	Best Supporting Actor, 25th Laurence Olivier Awards (2001) Best Supporting Actor, Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers' Choice Theatre Awards (2001)
	Tales from Hollywood (1984) by Christopher Hampton Donmar Warehouse, London	dn von Horvth
2003	Three Sisters (1900) by Anton Chekhov Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London	Lt. Col. Aleksandr Ignatyevich Vershinin
2004	Iphigenia at Aulis (410 BC) by Euripides, translated by Don Taylor (1990) Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London	Agamemnon
2005	The God of Hell (2004?) by Sam Shepard Donmar Warehouse, London	Welch
2005-2006	The Wild Duck (1884) by Henrik Ibsen Donmar Warehouse, London	Gregers Werle
2006	Thrse Raquin (1873) by mile Zola, adapted by Nicholas Wright Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London	Laurent
2008	Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) (first produced 1985) by Christopher Hampton American Airlines Theatre, New York City	Vicomte de Valmont	Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, Tony Awards (nominated) (2008).
2011	Luise Miller (1782-1784) by Friedrich Schiller Donmar Warehouse	The Chancellor
2011-2012	Haunted Child by Joe Penhall Royal Court Theatre, London	Douglas
2012	Don't Dress For Dinner (1987) by Marc Camoletti American Airlines Theatre, New York City	Robert