Michael Kitchen (born 31 October 1948) is an English actor and television producer, best known for his starring role as DCS Foyle in the British TV series Foyle's War.
Kitchen was born in Leicester. As a young boy (circa 1960) he was head chorister in the Church of the Martyrs choir where he was a regular soloist. He worked with the National Youth Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1969, while still at RADA, he won the "Emile Littler Award" for 'outstanding talent and aptitude for the professional theatre'.
Michael Kitchen was discovered at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) by Top Talent Agent Peter Froggatt of Plant & Froggatt Ltd. Since the early 1970s, Kitchen has been a fixture of UK television. His early appearances include roles in Play for Today (Hell's Angels by David Agnew, 1971), Thriller and Beasts. He then played the role of Martin in the original production of Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle; Peter in Stephen Poliakoff's Caught on a Train; Edmund in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of King Lear; the Antipholi in the same series' production of The Comedy of Errors; Private Bamforth in the 1979 BBC television play of The Long and the Short and the Tall; Rochus Misch in The Bunker; In 1993 he appeared in an episode of the BBC Police TV-series Between the Lines; in Berkeley Cole in Out of Africa, the King of the United Kingdom in To Play the King (1996) (a character recognisably modeled on Prince Charles); and a recurring role as Bill Tanner in the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Other films include Enchanted April (1992), Fatherland (1994), The Hanging Gale (1995), Kidnapped (1995), Mrs. Dalloway (1997), The Railway Children (1999), Proof of Life (2000) as Ian Havery and My Week with Marilyn (2011).
"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.
The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.
The earliest recorded use[citation needed] of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." [dubious – discuss] In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.
Frank A. Langella, Jr. (born January 1, 1938) is an American stage and film actor. He has won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in the play Frost/Nixon (2006), and later received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the same role in the film, Frost/Nixon (2008).
Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne. After the family moved to South Orange, New Jersey he graduated from Columbia High School, in the South Orange-Maplewood School District, in 1955, and graduated from Syracuse University in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama. He remains a brother of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity.