Robert Lindsay (born 13 December 1949) is an
English actor who is best known for
his television work, especially his roles in
Citizen Smith,
My Family, and
Hornblower.
Early life
Lindsay
was born Robert Lindsay Stevenson in Ilkeston
, Derbyshire
, the son of Norman and Joyce Stevenson.
After
leaving school, Lindsay enrolled in the drama department of a
technical college in Nottingham
, and intended to become a drama teacher.
However,
friends at Nottingham
Playhouse
encouraged him to apply to Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA), and in 1968 he was accepted there with the aid of a
government grant. After he graduated, he took a job as a
dialect coach for a repertory company in
Essex, and then joined a regional theatre group.
Lindsay first came to prominence as the cockney layabout Jakey
Smith in
ITV comedy series
Get Some In!, and he appeared in the
fourth series of the
BBC sitcom The Good Life. He was
then given the starring role as incompetent revolutionary Wolfie
Smith in the
BBC sitcom Citizen
Smith. He followed this with roles in a number of the
BBC Television
Shakespeare productions, including Benedick in
Much Ado About Nothing, and as
Edmund in
King Lear opposite
Lord Olivier in 1984. Also, it
should be noted that he took part in an obscure
Radio 4 show,
What Are You Talking
About?, in the early 1980s between Television Shakespeare
productions, in an attempt to establish a comedy career.
Stage career
Lindsay enjoyed a successful stage career, especially during the
1980s, including lead roles in several significant
Shakespearean productions.
He starred in the 1984
revival of Me and My Girl in
London and on Broadway
, netting a
Laurence Olivier Award and a
Tony Award in the category of Best Actor
in a Musical (against competition that included Colm Wilkinson and Terrence Mann in Les Mis in both
cases). He won another Olivier Award in the same category in
1997, for his portrayal of
Fagin in the
revival of
Oliver!.
He starred in a
production of The
Entertainer at the Old Vic
in
2007
1970s–1990s
Lindsay became famous in the UK in his role as incompetent
revolutionary Wolfie Smith in the BBC sitcom
Citizen Smith. Earlier, a young Lindsay
appeared on
The Good
Life in the 1977 series 4 episode entitled
Our Speaker Today.
Lindsay's
success on Broadway and in the
West
End
led to the starring role in the film Bert Rigby, You're a Fool,
although it was not a commercial success. Robert then took
the role as tom in the low budget adult comedy adventures of a taxi
driver, this was a big success. However, he continued to enjoy
success on television, and in 1991 played the leading role in
Alan Bleasdale's dark comedy serial
G.B.H., for which he won
a
BAFTA for his
performance. He also starred in the surreal
Channel 4 sitcom
Nightingales, and appeared in the films
Fierce Creatures and
Divorcing Jack. In 1998 he
was cast in the recurring role of
Captain Pellew in the
ITV mini-series
Hornblower, based on the novels
of
C.S. Forester. He was also the original choice for
the lead role in the drama
Cracker, but turned the part
down as he didn't want to become too associated with heavyweight,
darker drama characters. He later appeared as
Fagin in the 1999
ITV Oliver Twist
miniseries.
2000s
Lindsay has become familiar to a new generation of viewers as
Ben Harper in the popular BBC
sitcom
My Family since
2000.
In October
2005 he starred in a ITV drama series
Jericho, about a
Scotland
Yard
detective investigating murder and kidnapping in
London's Soho
in the
1950s. In January and February 2006, he appeared as Sneath
in two loosely linked
Stephen
Poliakoff dramas,
Friends
and Crocodiles and
Gideon's Daughter, shown on
BBC One. He was the only actor to appear in both
productions.
He has also portrayed
Prime Minister Tony Blair in the
Channel
4 satires
A Very Social Secretary and
The Trial of Tony Blair. In
2003, he made a guest appearance in an episode in
Absolutely Fabulous and also
provided his voice as the narrator for the BBC documentary series
Seven Wonders
of the Industrial World.
Lindsay appeared in the
8th Ricky Gervais Video
Podcast, where Gervais announced Lindsay would be starring in
the second series of
Extras. He appeared in the last
episode of the second series playing an egotistical, pushy version
of himself. He also appeared in the romantic comedy
Wimbledon, as the tennis club manager who hires Peter Colt
and played the protagonist, Maddox, from the
Radio 4 comedy
Electric Ink by
Alistair Beaton in 2009.
Lindsay sings the recorded version of
Derby County Football Club's song
"
Steve Bloomer's Watchin",
played and sung by the fans at the beginning of every home game,
and usually at the start of the second half and after a good
win.
Personal life
In 1974 Lindsay married
Cheryl Hall, who
was later to appear alongside him in
Citizen Smith.
They
divorced in 1980, when he started a long term relationship with the
actress Diana Weston, with whom he has
a daughter, Sydney Laura Stevenson (born Hammersmith
, London
, 2 April
1988), who co-starred with him in three episodes of My
Family. Since acting as Admiral Pellew in the
Hornblower series, Lindsay has become good friends with the real
Pellew family.
He then left Weston for actress/presenter
Rosemarie Ford.
The couple have two
sons, both born in Hillingdon
, London: Samuel Lindsay Stevenson (born 18 November
1999) and James Lindsay Stevenson (born 8 April 2003). The
couple married on 31 December 2006.
Lindsay researched his family tree in the third series of
Who Do You Think You
Are?, airing on 13 September 2006.
He travelled to his
hometown and to Turkey
, where his
grandfather Raymond Dunmore had taken part in the Gallipoli campaign during World War I.
Politics
Lindsay has always been known for his left-wing politics. He
describes himself as a staunch socialist, and has marched in the
past in support of miners. He vehemently opposed Prime Minister
Tony Blair's decisions to go to war in
Afghanistan and
Iraq, and now feels disillusioned with
mainstream politics: "You see those images of Iraq and Afghanistan
and Lebanon, don't you? And I suspect somewhere, when he goes home
at night and the kids are in bed, he must go, Jesus, what have I
done?"."
Notes
-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jan/13/broadcasting.arts
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