- Born
- Birth nameSimon Phillip Hugh Callow
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Simon Callow was born on June 13, 1949 in London, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), A Room with a View (1985) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). He has been married to Sebastian Fox since June 2016.
- SpouseSebastian Fox(June 2016 - present)
- ParentsNeil Francis CallowYvonne Mary Guise
- Often plays Charles Dickens or Dickensian characters
- His plummy English accent
- Rich, mellifluous voice
- Orson Welles expert and biographer
- Descended from circus performers - his great-great-grandmother was a bareback rider and his great-grandfather was a clown.
- Played the role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the stage version of "Amadeus" before appearing in the film version, in which he played "Emmanuel Schikaneder", who appeared in the first performance of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" and wrote the opera's libretto.
- Has said in interviews, he has not had a television set for a number of decades.
- Started acting after Sir Laurence Olivier's insistence that if he wanted to act, he should take a job at the box office of the Old Vic Theatre in London.
- Callow is the author of numerous books, including a biography of Charles Laughton, a book on acting and, most recently, a multi-volume biography of Orson Welles.
- [on Alec Guinness] He wrote to tell me he had just seen A Passage to India (1984), and as the lights had come up he had vomited in shame at his own performance as Professor Godbole.
- [on receiving the C.B.E. under the Tony Blair government] Being honoured by one's country is even better than winning a Tony Award. But since it comes from Downing Street, I suppose in a sense it is a Tony.
- I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.
- [on William Shakespeare] It's the most melodious words ever written in the English language. It's also in rhythm, you know, like music, and people love that.
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