Peter Firth
Firth at the 2009 BAFTA Awards ceremony, with fellow Spooks cast member, Miranda Raison.
Born	(1953-10-27) 27 October 1953 (age 58) Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1969–present

Peter Firth (born 27 October 1953) is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC show Spooks, of which he is the only actor to have starred in every episode of the show's 10 series lifespan. He is also known for playing a variety of starring roles in film and on television from the 1970s to the 2000s.^[1]

Early career[link]

Firth was a leading child actor by mid-1970, starring in The Flaxton Boys as Archie Weekes and the Here Come the Double Deckers series, which featured child actors in the leading roles. Firth played Scooper, the leader of the gang.

In July 1973, he appeared at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre,^[2] starring in the stage version of Peter Shaffer's play Equus, playing a teenager being treated by a psychiatrist, and in October 1974 repeated the role in the Broadway production, receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance as Alan Strang.

His first major role as an adult was in the title role in a 1976 BBC Television Play of the Month adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The adaptation was based on a stage adaptation by John Osborne and also starred Jeremy Brett and John Gielgud. That same year saw the release of the World War I film Aces High which featured Firth as the inexperienced RFC pilot Lt. Stephen Croft.

Firth played the lead role in the unsuccessful film adaptation of Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1977). That same year, he starred in the film adaptation of Equus, with Richard Burton. The film was only a moderate box office success, but earned Firth a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe award in the same category. Further film work quickly followed, most notably Roman Polanski's Tess (1979).

In May 1981, he appeared on Broadway again in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart replacing Tim Curry. Shaffer had offered him the role in the original London production, but he was unavailable due to film commitments.

Film[link]

Other film work has included roles in Diamonds on Wheels (1973); When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979); Lifeforce (1985); Letter to Brezhnev (1985); Northanger Abbey (1986), playing Henry Tilney; The Hunt for Red October (1990); White Angel (1993), playing mild mannered dentist Leslie Steckler; Amistad (1997); Pearl Harbor (2001); and The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), playing Lord Northcliffe).^[1]

Television[link]

In parallel to his film career, Firth has continued to appear in various television productions, with several notable credits in various high-profile dramas. He starred in two science-fiction episodes of the BBC's Play for Today anthology series as the eponymous time traveller in the romantic The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980), and its sequel, Another Flip for Dominick (1982). In 1994, in the First Season of Heartbeat, he played Dr. Radcliffe who partnered with Dr. Rowan (Niamh Cusack) in Whitby. He also portrayed the Emperor Vespasian in "The Jewish Revolt" episode of the BBC series Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.

For several years he had played senior MI5 officer Harry Pearce in the BBC's popular spy drama series Spooks (2002–2011), and played Fred Hoyle in Hawking, a BBC dramatisation of the early career of Stephen Hawking. He was also Snaith in the 3 part series South Riding in 2011. Firth has also appeared on American and Canadian television, on programmes such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Total Recall 2070, as well as in television films such as The Incident starring Walter Matthau.

Audiobooks[link]

Firth is also a narrator of audio books. He has been responsible for performances reading Pat Barker's Regeneration, The Ghost Road and The Eye in the Door, Suspicion by Robert McCrum, Maurice by E. M. Forster, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Personal life[link]

Firth was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, the son of publicans Mavis (née Hudson) and Eric Macintosh Firth, who also had a daughter.^[3]

He has been married twice: to the Irish dancer Maya, who later had an affair and resultant son born with Jason Dawes, the son of Diana Dors;^[4] and actress Lindsey Readman (1990 - ?) with whom he has four children.

On 17 July 2009, he was awarded an Honorary degree by the University of Bradford as a Doctor of Letters for his services to acting, having been nominated by the School of Computing, Informatics & Media; he received his award during the school's degree ceremony.^[5]

Selected filmography[link]

• Diamonds on Wheels (1973)
• King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975)
• Aces High (1976)
• Joseph Andrews (1977)
• Equus (1977)
• When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979)
• Tess (1979)
• Fire and Sword (1982)
• Born of Fire (1983)
• Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984)
• White Elephant (1984)
• Lifeforce (1985)
• Letter to Brezhnev (1985)
• A State of Emergency (1986)
• Prisoner of Rio (1988)
• Tree of Hands (1989)
• The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
• The Hunt for Red October (1990)
• The Pleasure Principle (1992)
• El marido perfecto (1993)
• Shadowlands (1993)
• White Angel (1994)
• An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)
• Merisairas (1996)
• Marco Polo: The Missing Chapter (1996)
• Gaston's War (1997)
• Amistad (1997)
• Mighty Joe Young (1998)
• Chill Factor (1999)
• Pearl Harbor (2001)
• The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Peter Firth at the Internet Movie Database
• Peter Firth at the Internet Broadway Database
• Peter Firth at AllRovi
• Peter Firth at Yahoo! Movies

Nicola Walker (born 1970) is an English actress, best known for her starring roles in various British television programmes from the 1990s onwards, particularly as Ruth Evershed in the spy drama Spooks. She has also worked in theatre, radio and film.

Early life[link]

Born in Stepney in the East End of London, she has an older brother. Walker attended Forest School, Walthamstow, and undertook acting classes from aged 12 to speak to boys.^[1] Walker then attended New Hall, Cambridge, where she started her acting career with the Cambridge Footlights. Her contemporaries included Spooks writer David Wolstencroft and comedienne Sue Perkins, who were all part of the 1990 national tour.^[2]

Career[link]

Offered a place at RADA, on graduation from Cambridge she already had some roles and an agent, so decided to pursue her career. Based in London, she shared a flat with Perkins, Sarah Phelps and Emma Kennedy, acting at the Edinburgh Festival and the London Festival Fringe.^[1]

Her first major television roles were in 1997, as Gypsy Jones in Channel 4's adaptation of A Dance To The Music Of Time, and as English teacher Suzy Travis in two series of Steven Moffat's school-based sitcom Chalk.^[3] She has also appeared in guest roles in episodes of series such as Dalziel and Pascoe, Jonathan Creek, Pie in the Sky and Broken News.

She got the leading part of DI Susan Taylor in the ITV thriller serial Touching Evil in 1997, co-starring opposite Robson Green. She also appeared in its two sequel serials in 1998 and 1999. Also in 1999, she took the lead role in the post-apocalyptic drama serial The Last Train, also screened on ITV (and written by future Spooks writer Matthew Graham). Also in 2003, Walker played Molly in the BBC Radio adaptation of Neuromancer by William Gibson.

In 2003, with the production team of Kudos Television looking to replace the character of Jenny Agutter from Series 1 of Spooks, the part of Ruth Evershed was specially written for her from Series 2.^[1] She remained with the show until the fifth series, during the production of which it was announced she was expecting her first child and would be leaving. She returned in 2009, and continued until the series ended in 2011.

In 2007 she had a prominent supporting role as a child snatcher in the ITV1 drama serial Torn and appeared in the BBC adaptation of Oliver Twist.

In film, her roles have tended to be smaller supporting parts. Her most prominent role has been as the irritating folk singer in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), who sings "Can't Smile Without You" at the first wedding. She also appeared in the feature film adaptation of the classic television series Thunderbirds (2004).

In 2008 she appeared in Gethsemane, a new play by David Hare at the National Theatre.

In 2009 she appeared as a maid in a new BBC adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, which also starred Michelle Dockery and Sue Johnston. In 2010 she appeared as a beleaguered wife (Linda Shand) of a murderer in an episode of the BBC1 crime thriller Luther.^[4]

From December 2010 to March 2011 she played Rachel in Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings at the National Theatre.

In February 2011, she appeared as nervous social worker Wendy in the BBC TV series Being Human.^[5] From October to November 2011, she played Viv in Amelia Bullmore's new play Di, Viv and Rose in the Hampstead Theatre's smaller studio theatre, as part of the Hampstead Downstairs scheme. In February 2012, she played a major character in one off BBC crime drama Inside Men.

Personal life[link]

She is married to actor Barnaby Kay. The couple have a son Harry (born 2006), who is named after Harry Pearce, the character of her co-star Peter Firth in Spooks.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Nicola Walker at the Internet Movie Database
• Nicola Walker profile on the Spooks website at bbc.co.uk.
• Nicola Walker profile on the bbc.co.uk Drama Faces website.