Samuel Alexander Joseph West, also known as Sam West (born 19 June 1966), is an English actor and director. He is best known for his role in the film Howards End and his work on stage (including the award-winning play Enron).

Biography

West has appeared alongside his actor parents on several occasions; with his mother Prunella Scales in Howards End and Stiff Upper Lips, and with his father Timothy West on stage in A Number, Henry IV Part I and Part II. In two films (Iris in 2001 and the 1996 television film Over Here), Sam and his father have played the same character at different ages. In Edward the Seventh, he and his brother Joseph played young sons of the title character, who was played by their father. In 2002 all three family members performed in Stravinsky's The Soldiers Tale at the St Magnus Festival on Orkney and in 2006 they gave a rehearsed reading of the Harold Pinter play Family Voices as part of the Sheffield Theatres Pinter season.

West became the patron of Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus in February 2008, having been the narrator for a concert of theirs in February 2002. He is also a patron of London children's charity Scene & Heard, Eastside Educational Trust and Mousetrap Theatre projects.

While at university, West was a member of the Socialist Workers Party and later briefly the Socialist Alliance. West has been a left-wing activist for many years; he was a critic of Tony Blair's New Labour government. On 26 March 2011 he spoke at the TUC March for the Alternative.

Samuel West has written essays on Richard II for the Cambridge University Press series Players of Shakespeare, on Hamlet for Michael Dobson's CUP study Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today and on Shakespeare and Love and Voice and Radio for BBC Radio 3.

He has also published articles on Harold Pinter, on Caryl Churchill and on the Shipping Forecast. He frequently writes and speaks in public about arts funding.

In 2013 he was one of the judges for the Forward Prizes for Poetry. In December 2014, he appeared on two programmes for Christmas University Challenge, as part of a team of alumni from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

West is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts and was a member of the council of the British Actors' Union Equity from 1996-2000 and 2008-2014. He is a keen birdwatcher.

In 2007 West moved in with playwright Laura Wade, but in 2011 the couple temporarily split up. In 2013 West was cast in a minor role in The Riot Club, the film version of Wade’s hit play, Posh and in 2014 the couple had a daughter.