Curated playlist
21st-century English male actors
- Christian Howard (actor)Actor Christian Howard played Ken in a Street Fighter short film that caught Capcom's attention.
- Jude LawJude Law dropped out of school at 17 to become an actor. It led to an Oscar nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley.
- Christian BaleChristian Bale once lived on black coffee, an apple and a can of tuna each day. The English actor began that regimen with nothing but cigarettes and whiskey. By the end he had lost 63 lb and weighed 121 lb. The script for the psychological…
- Ian McKellenIan McKellen came out as gay on BBC radio in 1988, while Parliament weighed Section 28.
- Michael CaineMichael Caine took his stage name from a cinema sign he saw while phoning from a Leicester Square telephone box.
- Tom HardyTom Hardy put on 42 pounds to play the English prisoner Charles Bronson. Bronson sent him his shaved-off mustache.
- Peter O'ToolePeter O'Toole asked the Academy to wait when it offered him an honorary Oscar. He hoped to win the award outright.
- Ed SheeranEd Sheeran bought a thirty-pound guitar two days after hearing Eric Clapton. He was eleven years old.
- Orlando BloomOrlando Bloom was named after Orlando Gibbons, an English composer of the 16th century. He was born in Canterbury, Kent, on the 13th of January 1977. Nothing about that start pointed toward a screen career. Some consider him the Errol…
- Sacha Baron CohenSacha Baron Cohen spilled flour on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars. He claimed it was Kim Jong-il's ashes.
- Tom HiddlestonTom Hiddleston is a British actor who once played Hamlet in a theatre of just 160 seats, with tickets given out by lottery to raise money for RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The run lasted three weeks in September 2017. Millions…
- Mick JaggerMick Jagger was carrying records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters on Platform Two of Dartford railway station on the 17th of October 1961. The man he met there was Keith Richards. The records revealed a shared passion for rhythm and blues,…
- Robert PattinsonRobert Pattinson is a British actor whose films have earned more than $4.7 billion worldwide. A teacher once advised him to stay out of his school drama club. He was born in London on the 13th of May 1986 and later ranked among the world's…
- Benedict CumberbatchA play titled Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die was meant as a love letter to his fans.
- Andrew GarfieldAndrew Garfield, the English and American actor born on the 20th of August 1983, very nearly never acted at all. He had planned to study business. At 16, a friend talked him into taking theatre studies at A-level, because the class was…
- Daniel Day-LewisDaniel Day-Lewis collapsed sobbing during a 1989 Hamlet, in the scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears.
- Sting (musician)Sting, the English musician and actor born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, once disowned his own first name on camera. In the 1985 documentary Bring On the Night, a journalist addressed him as Gordon. He answered, "My children call me Sting,…
- Robbie WilliamsRobbie Williams walked onto a stage at Knebworth on the 1st of August 2003 and faced a crowd of 125,000 people. He then did it again on the 2nd and the 3rd. Three consecutive nights, with that many people each time, made it the biggest…
- Daniel CraigIn 2021, the English actor Daniel Craig was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It sits at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard, an address that winks at the code number 007. Two days later his final film as that famous spy opened in the…
- Anthony DanielsAnthony Daniels walked out of 2001: A Space Odyssey after ten minutes. He later became C-3PO in Star Wars.
- John BoyegaJohn Boyega once left his Rise of Skywalker script in a hotel room, and it turned up on eBay.
- Ralph FiennesRalph Fiennes has played a Nazi camp commandant, a dark wizard, a British spymaster and a flirtatious hotel concierge, and audiences have believed every one of them. Born in 1962, the English actor and director carries the full name Ralph…
- Alan RickmanAlan Rickman almost turned down Die Hard. He took the villain role of Hans Gruber anyway.
- Christopher LeeSir Christopher Lee was 91 years and 6 months old when his single "Jingle Hell" entered the Billboard Hot Singles Sales chart at number 22. Press attention then pushed it up to number 18, which made him the oldest person to have a top 20…
- Tom HollandTom Holland, the English actor, has led films that together have grossed more than $9.9 billion worldwide, according to The Numbers. That total places him among the highest-grossing film actors of all time. In 2019 he appeared on the…
- Nicholas GalitzineNicholas Galitzine, the English actor whose surname is pronounced GAL-it-seen, once ate food worth 4000 calories every single day. The reason was a role that demands an outsized physique: He-Man, hero of the live action film Masters of the…
- Ben KingsleyBen Kingsley turned down an offer to become a pop star in 1966. He auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company instead.
- Idris ElbaIdris Elba spent a night locked alone in a cell on Robben Island. He did it to prepare to play Nelson Mandela.
- Patrick StewartPatrick Stewart grew a moustache for Macbeth and saw his father's face in the mirror.
- Andy SerkisDoes an actor in a suit covered in tracking dots deserve an Oscar? Andy Serkis became that debate's living proof.
- Rowan AtkinsonRowan Atkinson played one synthesizer note, over and over, at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The moment came during a performance of "Chariots of Fire". Atkinson appeared as Mr. Bean, and the single note soon…
- Daniel RadcliffeDaniel Radcliffe, an English actor born on the 23rd of July 1989, played Harry Potter in all eight films of the series between 2001 and 2011. When he was around 14 or 15, he and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were offered the…
- Harry StylesHarry Styles ran the Berlin Marathon in 2:59:13, a personal best, while entered under the pseudonym Sted Sarandos. The singer, songwriter and actor, born in 1994, also finished the Tokyo marathon in 2025, completing two of the six World…
- Jonathan BaileyJonathan Bailey was five years old when his grandmother took him to see Oliver! in London, and that single outing settled what he wanted to do with his life. His first ever appearance on a stage came in a primary school production of…
- Gary OldmanGary Oldman needed 200 hours in a makeup chair to become Winston Churchill. The transformation also took 14 pounds of silicone rubber. Then came US$20,000 worth of Cuban cigars, which left the actor with nicotine poisoning. Oldman, an…
- Tim CurryTim Curry titled his memoir Vagabond, and Grand Central Publishing released it on the 14th of October 2025. When a fan asked about the title, the English actor and singer offered two reasons. In the 17th and 18th centuries, he said, actors…
- Simon CallowSimon Callow's acting career began with a fan letter to Laurence Olivier. Olivier wrote back with a box-office job.
- Jamie Campbell BowerJamie Campbell Bower once needed up to eight hours of make-up work in a single day to become Vecna, the monstrous villain of the Netflix series Stranger Things. The man beneath the prosthetics is an English actor, singer, and guitarist. He…