- published: 19 Aug 2013
- views: 55356
Timothy Peter Dalton (born 21 March 1946) is a British actor of film and television. He is known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), as well as Rhett Butler in the television miniseries Scarlett (1994), an original sequel to Gone with the Wind. In addition, he is known for his roles as King Phillip II of France in the 1968 Academy-award winning The Lion In Winter, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1970), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1983), Prince Barin in Flash Gordon (1980), Shakespearean films and plays such as Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Henry V, Love's Labour's Lost, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. Recently, he had a voice acting part in Toy Story 3 as Mr. Pricklepants and portrayed the recurring character of Alexei Volkoff in the US TV series Chuck and Rassilon in the Doctor Who two-part episode "The End of Time".
Dalton was born in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, North Wales to an English father, who was a captain in the Special Operations Executive during World War II and had become an advertising executive at the time of his son's birth, and an American mother of Italian and Irish descent. Before his fourth birthday, the family moved back to England to Milford, a village near Belper, Derbyshire. While in Milford, he attended the Herbert Strutt Grammar School. As a teenager, he was a member of the Air Cadets. He decided to become an actor at 16 after seeing a production of Macbeth. He left school in 1964 to enroll in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and tour with the National Youth Theatre. Dalton did not complete his RADA studies, leaving the academy in 1966 to join the ensemble of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.