Tobias Menzies

Tobias Menzies
Menzies at the Outlander premiere in New York
Born	(1974-03-07) 7 March 1974 London, England
Education	Frensham Heights School Stratford-upon-Avon College
Alma mater	Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (BA, 1998)
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1998–present

Tobias Menzies (born 7 March 1974) is an English stage, television and film actor. While working in theatre, he starred in television shows such as Rome (2005–2007) where he played Brutus and Game of Thrones (2013–2016) where he played Edmure Tully. He is probably best known for his dual role as Frank Randall and Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall in Outlander (2014–2017), for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination. His film work includes Casino Royale and Underworld: Blood Wars. Menzies will portray Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in the third and fourth seasons of the original Netflix series The Crown.

Early years

Tobias Menzies was born in North London, England, the son of Gillian (née Simpson), a teacher, and Peter Menzies, a BBC radio producer.^[1] He has one younger brother, Luke, who is a solicitor.^[2]

Menzies attended the Perry Court Rudolf Steiner School in Canterbury, Kent, where he was trained in the Steiner System, which includes movement, singing and musical instrumentation. Next he attended the Frensham Heights School near Farnham in Surrey at the same time as Hattie Morahan and Jim Sturgess. He went on to attend Deborah Moody's Year Out Drama Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1993–94. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he graduated in 1998 with a BA degree in Acting.^[3]

Career

Menzies worked with the Spontaneity Shop, a British improv comedy company. He began his TV and film career in some of British television's most popular series, including Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders and Casualty. He also appeared in A Very Social Secretary directed by Jon Jones, which launched UK Channel 4's spin-off station, More4.

He is best known to international audiences for his starring role as Marcus Junius Brutus, Julius Caesar's friend and later co-assassin, in the HBO/BBC historical drama series Rome (2005–07).^[4]

Menzies had a major role in The Low Down with Aidan Gillen, and was featured in the 2006 reboot of the James Bond film franchise, Casino Royale, as M's aide, Villiers.

He has worked extensively on the stage, with credits including the young teacher Irwin in Alan Bennett's The History Boys (which Nicholas Hytner directed at the Royal National Theatre), and Michael Blakemore's West End production of Three Sisters for which he was nominated for the Ian Charleson Award. Of his role in The History Boys, one reviewer wrote:

There is a remarkable performance, too, from Tobias Menzies as the slick supply-teacher historian, who believes academic success is merely a matter of tricks and spin. But Menzies also discovers a surprisingly attractive vulnerability in the character I missed the first time around.

— Charles Spencer, The Telegraph

Menzies played the title role in Rupert Goold's production of Hamlet, at the Royal Theatre, Northampton to an appreciative critical reception:

One of Shakespeare's greatest innovations was to dramatise people's thought processes: the articulation of the mind's search for meaning and identity. This is where Menzies' performance is most thrilling. He shows how language strives to express the self and to pin down the truth. Who am I? What do I think and feel? Menzies' delivery of the "To be or not to be..." speech burns with intelligence. This is one of the finest and most exciting Hamlets I’ve seen. Observe his face: it seems to mature, grow softer, more observant and expressive, and his death becomes a fulfilment as well as a failure

— John Peter, The Sunday Times

The Independent noted that Menzies, "enjoying his antic disposition ... plays the fool dazzlingly: a stage natural.... He gives it everything, even the fight."

In April 2007 Menzies appeared as William Elliot in ITV's production of Jane Austen's classic, Persuasion, and also played Peter Trifimov in The Cherry Orchard with Joanna Lumley (at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield). The Yorkshire Post said, "The one who burns the brightest is Tobias Menzies as the idealistic perpetual student Trofimov. His performance is breathtaking."

He appeared as Derrick Sington in Channel 4's dramatisation of The Relief of Belsen broadcast 15 October 2007 and then he filmed Forget Me Not, a Quicksilver Films production, in which he starred alongside Genevieve O'Reilly.^[5]

In 2009 he guest-starred in 2 episodes of the long-running television drama Spooks.

Menzies plays Edmure Tully, the heir to House Tully of Riverrun in HBO's Game of Thrones.^[6]

In 2012, he appeared in the political satire series The Thick of It during series 4 as Simon Weir, as part of the Goolding Inquiry.

In 2014, Menzies played Maggie Gyllenhaal's bodyguard, Nathaniel Bloom, in the TV mini-series The Honourable Woman.^[7] The same year, Menzies also began co-starring in the Starz period TV series, Outlander as two characters: Frank Randall, a 20th-century historian, and Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, his brutal 18th-century ancestor.^[8][9][10]

In 2016 Menzies was cast to play a lead role in AMC's anthology series The Terror, which started airing in 2018.^[11][12]

In August 2017 it was announced that Menzies was cast to play a family doctor in an adaptation of Carmilla, a Gothic novella by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu.^[13]

In 2018 Menzies appeared as Duke of Cornwall in a BBC2 adaptation of King Lear starring Anthony Hopkins.^[14]

In March 2018 it was announced that Menzies was cast to play Prince Philip in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown TV series, opposite Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II.^[15]

Filmography

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tobias Menzies.

• Tobias Menzies on IMDb
• "Outlander Interview". ShowbizJunkies. July 2014.