David Oakes Biography

David Oakes (born Rowan David Oakes; 14 October 1983) is an English film, television and theatre actor known for his roles in The Pillars of the Earth, The Borgias, and The White Queen.

Early life and education

He was born in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England, the son of a Church of England canon and a professional musician.

Oakes was head boy at Bishop Wordsworth's School, in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he was also heavily involved with the Salisbury Playhouse and their youth theatre, Stage 65. He graduated with a first in English Literature from the University of Manchester.

He attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 2005 to 2007.

Career

He played the villainous William Hamleigh in the television miniseries The Pillars of the Earth (2010), produced by Ridley Scott's production company. David was present to accept the Jury Prize at the 2011 Romy Awards in Vienna alongside Donald Sutherland and Natalia Wrner.

The following year, Oakes was cast in the television miniseries The Borgias (2011), airing on Showtime. He played Juan Borgia opposite Jeremy Irons. Whilst shooting the second season, David performed a cameo in the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End (2012).

Continuing a career on television playing morally dubious characters, Oakes had a role in The White Queen for BBC One and Starz playing George, Duke of Clarence. It was broadcast in mid-2013.

In attempt to get away from the TV Period Bad Boy, in 2013 David played Mr Darcy in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice at Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park. He said: "I've been playing bad guys back to back, so Darcy's a bit of an antidote!" He followed this by more Stage work, appearing in the World Premiere of Shakespeare in Love at the Nol Coward Theatre as Christopher Marlowe.

In a return to TV period dramas in 2015, Oakes guest-starred in both the third season of Endeavor with Shaun Evans and in BBC's limited series' The Living and the Dead with Colin Morgan.

The role of Prince Ernest, brother of Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, went to Oakes in 2016 in the ITV series, Victoria. The role reunited Oakes with his Trinity co-star, Tom Hughes, and Pillars of the Earth co-star, Rufus Sewell. It aired on PBS in The United States in 2017, and will continue for a second season.

Later in 2017, Oakes will be seen in Cold Skin in his first lead film role.

Television

Year	Title	Role	Director	Channel	Notes
2008	Bonekickers	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	Iain B. MacDonald	BBC One	Episode 6 "Follow the Gleam"
	Walter's War	Oswald Hennessey	Alrick Riley	BBC Four
2009	Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant	George Cavendish		Channel 4	Episode 3 "Lover"
	Trinity	Ross Bonham	Colin Teague	ITV2	Episodes 1, 2, 3
2010	The Pillars of the Earth	Lord William Hamleigh	Sergio Mimica-Gezzan		TV miniseries; Appeared in all eight episodes
2011–2012	The Borgias	Juan Borgia	Neil Jordan, John Maybury, David Leland, John Amiel, Kari Skogland, Jeremy Podeswa et al.		Season 1 & 2
2012	World Without End	Bishop Henri	Michael Caton-Jones	Channel 4	Appears as a cameo alongside Charlotte Riley
2013	Ripper Street	Victor Silver	Andy Wilson		Episode 8 What Use Our Work?
	The White Queen	George, Duke of Clarence	James Kent, Jamie Payne and Colin Teague		Episodes 1 - 7
2014	Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal	Kim Philby		BBC2	Two-part drama documentary by Ben MacIntyre
2015	Endeavour	Jocelyn "Joss" Bixby	Sandra Goldbacher	ITV & Mammoth Productions
	The Living and the Dead	William Payne	Sam Donovan	BBC
2016–2017	Victoria	Prince Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha	Tom Vaughan, Sandra Goldbacher & Oliver Blackburn	ITV & Mammoth Productions	Season 1 and 2

Film

Year	Title	Role	Producer	Notes
2012	Truth or Die	Justin	Corona Pictures	UK release on 6 August 2012; Called "Truth or Dare" in the UK
	100Dniowk@	David Potter	Agresywna Banda	Polish Feature Film
2013	Love By Design	Adrian	Solar Junction	Rom Com with Jane Seymour and Olivia Hallinan
	Goblin?	Harry	Multi Story Film	Short film with The Borgias co-star Holliday Grainger
	Who Shall I Play With Now?	Gregory	Dog Ate Cake	UK premiere on 29 June 2013 at the Wimbledon Shorts Festival
2014	Sins of a Father	Martin	Andrew Piddington	A re-shot, re-edited version of the 1991 film Shuttlecock with Alan Bates and Lambert Wilson
2016	Cold Skin	Friend	Xavier Gens	An adaptation of the novel co-starring Ray Stevenson

Radio

• Oakes has performed with The Fitzrovia Radio Hour
• 2008: A Dance to the Music of Time as Charles Stringham (BBC Radio 4)

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Theatre	Director
2006	Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare	Claudio & Verges	Royal Shakespeare Company & Bristol Old Vic Theatre School	John Hartoch
2007	Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare	Dumaine	Shakespeare's Globe & International Tour	Dominic Dromgoole
	We the People (World Premiere) by Eric Schlosser	Charles Pinckney & Gunning Bedford Jnr	Shakespeare's Globe	Charlotte Westenra
2008	Old Vic New Voices: The Twenty-four Hour Plays	Davide	Old Vic Theatre
	Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff	Raleigh	Mercury Theatre, Colchester	Tony Casement
	Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller	Mortimer	Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh	Aida Karic
2009	All The Little Things We Crushed (World Premiere) by Joel Horwood	Hugh	Almeida Theatre, London	Simon Godwin
2011	Three Farces ("Slasher and Crasher", "A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion" & "Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw") by John Maddison Morton	Samson Slasher & John Bagshaw	Orange Tree Theatre, London	Henry Bell
2013	Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen adapted by Simon Reade	Darcy	Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London	Deborah Bruce
2014-2015	Shakespeare in Love (World Premiere) by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard adapted by Lee Hall	Christopher Marlowe	Nol Coward Theatre, West End, London	Declan Donnellan
2015	The Trial of Macbeth by Jonathan Myerson	Banquo	Nol Coward Theatre	Christopher Haydon

• In 2006, David performed a 90-minute abridged version of Much Ado About Nothing as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Complete Works" festival along with his final year graduates from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
• Since appearing at Shakespeare's Globe at the outset of his career, David has frequently performed in numerous rehearsed readings as part of their "Read Not Dead" initiative. Including their landmark 200th reading of Philip Massinger's A New Way To Pay Old Debts; David played Wellborn alongside a cast including Benjamin Whitrow, Alan Cox and Nicholas Rowe.
• Other performances between 2008 and 2013 for "Read Not Dead" include: An early quarto edition of Henry IV: Part One as Prince Hal oppopsite Benjamin Whitrow's Falstaff, Calderon's Life is a Dream (La Vida Es Sueno) as Segismundo, Taming Of A Shrew as Aurelias, The Spanish Tragedy as Lorenzo, The Return from Parnassus as Ingenioso, Bassianus as Geta, Gorboduc as a "smooth, almost oily" Arostus, John Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis as Montanus and Thomas Middleton's Your Five Gallants as Tailby.
• Oakes set up a theatre company called Dog Ate Cake with a long term theatrical collaborator, Henry Bell
• David was nominated for both WhatsOnStage and Broadway World awards for his performance in Shakespeare in Love in 2015. The production was also nominated for an Olivier Award.
• In 2015 David starred as Banquo in a charity fundraiser for the Shakespeare Schools Festival. The event was largely improvised by the actors and lawyers involved, but based on a framework written by Jonathan Myerson. The cast also included Christopher Ecclestone as Macbeth, Haydn Gwynne as Lady Macbeth, Patterson Joseph as MacDuff and Pippa Bennett-Warner as one of the Weird Sisters. The event interrupted the events of Shakespeare's play following the death of Duncan and placed Macbeth on trial for Murder with David, Patterson and Haydn appearing as witnesses for the prosecution and Christopher and Pippa as witnesses for the defence. The event was overseen by High Court Judge, Sir Michael Burton, the QC's were John Kelsey-Fry, Jonathan Laidlaw, Dinah Rose and Ian Winter, and the foreman of the Jury was Jeremy Paxman.

Theatre Direction

Oakes has directed a number of theatre pieces alongside his acting career. In 2003 he took a stage adaptation of The Wicker Man to the Epping Forest Theatre Festival. Rehearsing in and around his home town of Salisbury, Oakes "got kicked out of the [Cathedral] Close for rehearsing pagan rituals for [his] open-air production of The Wicker Man."

At University he directed numerous plays including Martin McDonagh's Beauty Queen of Leenane, Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and Anthony Minghella's Whale Music

Also whilst at University, in 2005 Oakes assisted director Natalie Wilson on a production of "Smilin' Through" which was co-produced by the Truant Company, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Contact Theatre, Manchester Later that year, Oakes once again turning to literary adaptation, took a production of Stephen King's The Boogeyman to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

With his and Bell's theatre company, Dog Ate Cake, in 2009 Oakes directed a small tour revival of John Maddison Morton's Box and Cox

Oakes frequently directs at Shakespeare's Globe extending their Read Not Dead Series, a study devoted to performing fully staged readings of the entirety of the Early Modern Canon of Drama: Most recently Oakes directed Robert Greene's The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Lewis Theobald's "Happy Ending" version of John Webster's Duchess of Malfi, "The Fatal Secret".

David recently directed an extract of Robert Daborne's A Christian Turn'd Turk as part of a special Read Not Dead event at Shakespeare's Globe. Four directors with four scholars were teamed up with actors and presented their arguments and selected scenes at a special hustings event on Thursday 29 May 2014

Personal life

Oakes plays both the clarinet and bass clarinet, and is a strong bass singer.

He is an avid follower of folk music, and continues to support the Bristol folk group Sheelanagig.

He has an extensive collection of canoes and is currently developing a comedy pilot based on this interest. His preferred canoe method is kayak but he also enjoys Canadian canoeing.

Art

Oakes is an avid fine line sketcher. He is increasingly known for sketching on-set animals upon coloured pages of script reissues and giving them to production members. In May 2015 he exhibited as part of the Dulwich Artists Open House Festival alongside artist and designer Sarah Hamilton. He has also contributed a chapter on Charity Cards for Sarah Hamilton's book, "House of Cards".

Charity Work

David, following his infant niece being diagnosed with a lung condition, has been heavily involved with raising awareness for and fundraising on behalf of the British Lung Foundation.

In 2013, Oakes collaborated with his The Borgias cast mate, Holliday Grainger, to make the short comedy film "Goblin". Directed by Christian James, the film was screened at the 2014 Film 4 Fright Fest in their Shorts Showcase, and all profits from the sale of this film were donated to the British Lung Foundation.

Later in 2014, Oakes ran the length of the country to raise awareness for infant lung diseases for both the British Lung Foundation and ChILD Lung Foundation UK. More recently he joined with the BLF to promote their new Children's Hub to provide families with information and support. Alongside this, in 2016, he created the charity's Christmas card.

Since 2014, Oakes has also been a patron of Anno's Africa, an arts-based charity working with Kenyan orphans and slum children, and has supported the UK based Shakespeare Schools Festival, most notable with and surrounding their "Trial of Macbeth".

See also

• List of British actors and actresses