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Michael Pennington is a Actor British born on 7 june 1943 at Cambridge (United-kingdom)
Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington (born 7 June 1943) is a British actor, director and writer. Together with director Michael Bogdanov, he founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 and was its Joint Artistic Director until 1992. He has written ten books, directed in the UK, US, Romania and Japan, and is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Pennington was born in Cambridge, the son of a Scottish mother and a Welsh father and grew up in London. He was educated at Marlborough College, became a member of the National Youth Theatre and then read English at Trinity College, Cambridge.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation and remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966, playing among other things Fortinbras in David Warner's 1965 Hamlet. He then left the company for eight years and worked in London, both on the stage (in John Mortimer's The Judge, Christopher Hampton's Savages and Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet with Nicol Williamson), and on TV in many single dramas. He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure, beginning a relationship with the company as a leading actor which culminated in his own performance of Hamlet in 1980/81: he also played Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost, Edgar in King Lear, and in new work by David Rudkin, David Edgar and Howard Brenton and classic works by Sean O'Casey, Euripides and William Congreve. He then left the company for a further eight years before appearing in Stephen Poliakoff's Playing with Trains, and ten years after that in the title role of Timon of Athens. In the meanwhile he appeared at the National Theatre in 1984 in Tolstoy's Strider, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award, in Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and also premiered his solo show Anton Chekhov which he has been regularly touring internationally ever since. He also played Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov's famous adaptation of Crime and Punishment and Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in London's West End and played the title role on Sophocles' Oedipus the King on BBC TV in 1985.
In 1986, Pennington and director Michael Bogdanov together founded the English Shakespeare Company. As joint artistic director, he starred in the company's inaugural productions of The Henrys and, in 1987, the seven-play history cycle of The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide and was televised. Pennington played such parts as Richard II, Prince Hal/Henry V and Jack Cade (Olivier Award Nomination). In subsequent seasons with the ESC, he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale and the title roles in Macbeth and Coriolanus (Olivier Award Nomination) and directed Twelfth Night, which he then also directed for the Haiyuza Company in Tokyo and for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.
West End work in the 1990s included Peter Shaffer's Gift of the Gorgon, Filumena (Eduardo di Filippo), in which he played opposite Judi Dench for the third time; Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet, Major Arnold in Taking Sides (Ronald Harwood), Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecency, Sir John Brute in Farquhar's The Provok’d Wife, Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's Waste, Trigorin in The Seagull, the title role in Molière's The Misanthrope. In the first Harold Pinter Festival in Dublin he played in Pinter’s Old Times and One for the Road.
His stage work in the 2000s included Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw (National tour), the title role in
The Guardsman (West End), Daivid Mamet's The Shawl (Crucible Theatre Sheffield), Walter Burns in The Front Page (Chichester Festival Theatre), the title roles in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III and Dr Dorn in Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Peter Stein for the Edinburgh Festival)
In 2003 he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and The Hamlet Project
for the National Theatre in Bucharest. In 2005 he appeared in David Greig's The Cosmonaut’s Last Message... (Donmar Warehouse); Colder Than Here (Soho Theatre), and in the title role in Nathan the Wise (Hampstead Theatre).
He also played a sequence of real-life characters such as Sidney Cockerell in The Best of Friends (Hampstead Theatre 2006), 2007 : Robert Maxwell in The Bargain by Ian Curteis (2007), Charles Dickens in Little Nell by Simon Gray (2007), Wilhelm Furtwangler in Taking Sides and Richard Strauss in Collaboration by Ronald Harwood (Chichester and West End, 2008-9) He had previously played the other central role in Taking Sides in the West End.
In 2006 he premiered his second one man show, this one on Shakespeare, Sweet William, and in 2009 he worked with Peter Brook for the first time in Love is My Sin for a European Tour and in New York.
In 2010 he returned to Chichester to play the title role in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and the following year
Dr Fabio in The Syndicate by Eduardo de Filippo opposite Ian McKellen. In 2012 he played his fifth consecutive Chichester season as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra opposite Kim Cattrall.
Notable performances since then have been as Edgar in Strindberg's The Dance of Death, adapted by Howard Brenton at the Gate Theatre, John of Gaunt in Richard II (RSC), and as Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett's Single Spies at the Rose Theatre Kingston.
In 2014 he triumphed in the title role in King Lear for Theatre for a New Audience in New York, a performance he plans to repeat in the UK), before undertaking a further tour of his solo Shakespeare show Sweet William (Oregon, Tel Aviv, France). He has recently finished recording the part of Euripides in Macedonia by David Rudkin for Radio 3, and in 2015 plans to take his solo show Anton Chekhov to Moscow.
He played Michael Foot in The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep; and among his notable TV appearances have been in the title role of "Oedipus the King" and in the television movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
He is the author of the book Are You There, Crocodile? which combines biographical material about the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov with an account of the writing of his highly successful one-man show about Chekhov; the full text of which is included. He has also written three books about individual Shakespeare plays, "Sweet William - Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare", and most recently Let Me Play the Lion Too - How to Be an Actor for Faber and Faber. His solo show "Sweet William" is available as a DVD. Pennington has also worked as a narrator on many TV documentaries.
In April 2004 he became the second actor, after Harley Granville-Barker in 1925, to deliver the British Academy's annual Shakespeare lecture. The lecture was entitled Barnadine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail.
Source : Wikidata
Michael Pennington
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Birth name Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 7 june 1943 (80 years) at Cambridge (United-kingdom)
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 7 june 1943 (80 years) at Cambridge (United-kingdom)
Pennington was born in Cambridge, the son of a Scottish mother and a Welsh father and grew up in London. He was educated at Marlborough College, became a member of the National Youth Theatre and then read English at Trinity College, Cambridge.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation and remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966, playing among other things Fortinbras in David Warner's 1965 Hamlet. He then left the company for eight years and worked in London, both on the stage (in John Mortimer's The Judge, Christopher Hampton's Savages and Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet with Nicol Williamson), and on TV in many single dramas. He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure, beginning a relationship with the company as a leading actor which culminated in his own performance of Hamlet in 1980/81: he also played Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost, Edgar in King Lear, and in new work by David Rudkin, David Edgar and Howard Brenton and classic works by Sean O'Casey, Euripides and William Congreve. He then left the company for a further eight years before appearing in Stephen Poliakoff's Playing with Trains, and ten years after that in the title role of Timon of Athens. In the meanwhile he appeared at the National Theatre in 1984 in Tolstoy's Strider, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award, in Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and also premiered his solo show Anton Chekhov which he has been regularly touring internationally ever since. He also played Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov's famous adaptation of Crime and Punishment and Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in London's West End and played the title role on Sophocles' Oedipus the King on BBC TV in 1985.
In 1986, Pennington and director Michael Bogdanov together founded the English Shakespeare Company. As joint artistic director, he starred in the company's inaugural productions of The Henrys and, in 1987, the seven-play history cycle of The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide and was televised. Pennington played such parts as Richard II, Prince Hal/Henry V and Jack Cade (Olivier Award Nomination). In subsequent seasons with the ESC, he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale and the title roles in Macbeth and Coriolanus (Olivier Award Nomination) and directed Twelfth Night, which he then also directed for the Haiyuza Company in Tokyo and for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.
West End work in the 1990s included Peter Shaffer's Gift of the Gorgon, Filumena (Eduardo di Filippo), in which he played opposite Judi Dench for the third time; Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet, Major Arnold in Taking Sides (Ronald Harwood), Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecency, Sir John Brute in Farquhar's The Provok’d Wife, Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's Waste, Trigorin in The Seagull, the title role in Molière's The Misanthrope. In the first Harold Pinter Festival in Dublin he played in Pinter’s Old Times and One for the Road.
His stage work in the 2000s included Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw (National tour), the title role in
The Guardsman (West End), Daivid Mamet's The Shawl (Crucible Theatre Sheffield), Walter Burns in The Front Page (Chichester Festival Theatre), the title roles in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III and Dr Dorn in Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Peter Stein for the Edinburgh Festival)
In 2003 he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and The Hamlet Project
for the National Theatre in Bucharest. In 2005 he appeared in David Greig's The Cosmonaut’s Last Message... (Donmar Warehouse); Colder Than Here (Soho Theatre), and in the title role in Nathan the Wise (Hampstead Theatre).
He also played a sequence of real-life characters such as Sidney Cockerell in The Best of Friends (Hampstead Theatre 2006), 2007 : Robert Maxwell in The Bargain by Ian Curteis (2007), Charles Dickens in Little Nell by Simon Gray (2007), Wilhelm Furtwangler in Taking Sides and Richard Strauss in Collaboration by Ronald Harwood (Chichester and West End, 2008-9) He had previously played the other central role in Taking Sides in the West End.
In 2006 he premiered his second one man show, this one on Shakespeare, Sweet William, and in 2009 he worked with Peter Brook for the first time in Love is My Sin for a European Tour and in New York.
In 2010 he returned to Chichester to play the title role in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and the following year
Dr Fabio in The Syndicate by Eduardo de Filippo opposite Ian McKellen. In 2012 he played his fifth consecutive Chichester season as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra opposite Kim Cattrall.
Notable performances since then have been as Edgar in Strindberg's The Dance of Death, adapted by Howard Brenton at the Gate Theatre, John of Gaunt in Richard II (RSC), and as Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett's Single Spies at the Rose Theatre Kingston.
In 2014 he triumphed in the title role in King Lear for Theatre for a New Audience in New York, a performance he plans to repeat in the UK), before undertaking a further tour of his solo Shakespeare show Sweet William (Oregon, Tel Aviv, France). He has recently finished recording the part of Euripides in Macedonia by David Rudkin for Radio 3, and in 2015 plans to take his solo show Anton Chekhov to Moscow.
He played Michael Foot in The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep; and among his notable TV appearances have been in the title role of "Oedipus the King" and in the television movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
He is the author of the book Are You There, Crocodile? which combines biographical material about the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov with an account of the writing of his highly successful one-man show about Chekhov; the full text of which is included. He has also written three books about individual Shakespeare plays, "Sweet William - Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare", and most recently Let Me Play the Lion Too - How to Be an Actor for Faber and Faber. His solo show "Sweet William" is available as a DVD. Pennington has also worked as a narrator on many TV documentaries.
In April 2004 he became the second actor, after Harley Granville-Barker in 1925, to deliver the British Academy's annual Shakespeare lecture. The lecture was entitled Barnadine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail.
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Filmography of Michael Pennington (7 films)
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The Iron Lady (2011)
, 1h45Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Biography, Historical
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about psychiatry, Films about disabilities, Political films
Actors Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Anthony Head, Alexandra Roach, Richard E. Grant, Iain Glen
Roles Michael Foot
Rating63%
The film begins in September 2008 (opening against the backdrop of news of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing) with an elderly Lady Thatcher buying milk unrecognized by other customers and walking back from the shop alone. Over the course of three days, we see her struggle with dementia and with the lack of power that comes with old age, while looking back on defining moments of her personal and professional life, on which she reminisces with her (now-dead) husband, Denis Thatcher, whose death she is unable to fully accept. She is shown as having difficulty distinguishing between the past and present. A theme throughout the film is the personal price that Thatcher has paid for power. Denis is portrayed as somewhat ambivalent about his wife's rise to power, her son Mark lives in South Africa and is shown as having little contact with his mother, and Thatcher's relationship with her daughter Carol is at times strained.
Into the Storm (2009)
, 1h40Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan
Genres Drama, Biography, Historical
Themes Political films
Actors Brendan Gleeson, Iain Glen, Janet McTeer, James D'Arcy, Patrick Malahide, Robert Pugh
Roles Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Rating69%
The Second World War has recently ended in Europe, and the people of the United Kingdom are awaiting the results of the 1945 general election. During this time, Winston Churchill goes to France for a holiday with his wife Clemmie. Through a series of flashbacks, Churchill recalls some of his most glorious moments during the war, and the effect it had on their marriage.
Fragile (2005)
, 1h33Directed by Jaume Balagueró
Origin Espagne
Genres Thriller, Horror
Themes Medical-themed films, Ghost films, Films about psychiatry, Films about disabilities, Films about autism
Actors Calista Flockhart, Elena Anaya, Richard Roxburgh, Colin McFarlane, Gemma Jones, Ivana Baquero
Roles Marcus
Rating60%
On the Isle of Wight, just off the South Coast of England, a train accident means that the main hospital is completely full and is unable to take in any more patients. The smaller and older hospital, Mercy Falls which is more isolated, is being closed down however this accident means that some of the patients, including the childrens ward, need to remain at the site until there is availability elsewhere. The hospital has three floors with the children's ward on the first floor. The second floor was closed off twenty years before and is unaccessable due to the elevator buttons being disabled and the stairs blocked off.
The Last Bolshevik (1993)
, 2hDirected by Chris Marker
Origin France
Genres Documentary, Historical
Themes Documentary films about business, Documentary films about the film industry, Documentaire sur une personnalité
Actors Youli Raizman, Victor Dyomin, Jean-Claude Dauphin, Aleksandr Medvedkin, Michael Pennington
Roles Voice (voice)
Rating77%
Chris Marker réalise un portrait de son ami Alexandre Medvedkine qui retrace conjointement l'histoire de l'URSS et celle d'un réalisateur partagé entre idéologie et indépendance.
, 1h40Directed by Kevin Connor
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Comedy thriller, Crime
Themes Sherlock Holmes films, Buddy films
Actors Margaret Colin, Michael Pennington, Connie Booth, Nicholas Guest, Lila Kaye, William Hootkins
Roles Sherlock Holmes
Rating60%
In the beginning sequence, a former FBI agent named Carter Morstan (Barry Morse) receives an unwelcome visit by a man named Small. In the ensuing struggle, a gunshot rings. Subsequently, a body is wrapped into a carpet and set alight.
Return of the Jedi (1983)
, 2h14Directed by Richard Marquand
Origin USA
Genres Science fiction, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about children, Space adventure films, Monde imaginaire, Dans l'espace, Sur une planète fictive, Films about extraterrestrial life, Space opera, Children's films, Films about extraterrestrial life, Robot films
Actors Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse
Roles Moff Jerjerrod
Rating79%
Luke Skywalker initiates a plan to rescue Han Solo from the crime lord Jabba the Hutt with the help of Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2. Leia infiltrates Jabba's palace on Tatooine disguised as a bounty hunter with Chewbacca as her prisoner. Lando is already there disguised as a guard. Leia releases Han from his carbonite prison, but she is captured and enslaved. Luke arrives soon afterward but after a tense standoff, he is captured. After Luke survives his battle with Jabba's Rancor, Jabba sentences him and Han to death by feeding them to the Sarlacc. Luke frees himself and battles Jabba's guards. During the chaos, Boba Fett, who has remained at Jabba's palace since delivering Han, attempts to attack Luke, but Han inadvertently knocks him into the Sarlacc pit. Meanwhile, Leia strangles Jabba to death, and Luke destroys Jabba's sail barge as the group escapes. While the others rendezvous with the Rebel Alliance, Luke returns to Dagobah where he finds that Yoda is dying. Before he dies, Yoda confirms that Darth Vader, once known as Anakin Skywalker, is Luke's father, and there is "another Skywalker". The spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi confirms that this other Skywalker is Luke's twin sister, Leia. Obi-Wan tells Luke that he must fight Vader again to defeat the Empire.
Hamlet (1969)
, 1h57Directed by Tony Richardson
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Themes Films about families, Théâtre, Political films, Films based on plays, Films based on works by William Shakespeare, Films about royalty
Actors Nicol Williamson, Marianne Faithfull, Anthony Hopkins, Judy Parfitt, Gordon Jackson, Michael Pennington
Roles Laërte
Rating69%
Adaptation de la pièce Hamlet de William Shakespeare.