Simon Callow
Simon Callow is an English character actor whose stage reputation the screen work only partly reflects. He has an Olivier Award, a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award and two BAFTA nominations, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1999 for services to acting.
On film he has been the reliable Englishman of a certain size for forty years. Amadeus (1984) put him in a wig as the impresario Emanuel Schikaneder; A Room with a View and Maurice made him a fixture of the Forster adaptations; Shakespeare in Love had him as Tilney, the Master of the Revels; and Four Weddings and a Funeral gave him Gareth, the part anyone who saw it in 1994 still names first. The common factor is volume, in both senses. Callow fills a frame, and he does not lower his voice for the camera.
He has never been precious about the rest of it. The same actor plays Vincent Cadby in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Andre in the 2004 Phantom of the Opera, the Grasshopper in James and the Giant Peach, a version of himself in Notting Hill, and Cavendish in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 in 2024. That spread of quality inside one filmography is a career decision, and a fairly cheerful one.
Movies (41)
- Notting Hill (1999)
- Amadeus (1984)
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (2024)
- The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
- Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)
- Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
- Street Fighter (1994)
- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
- James and the Giant Peach (1996)
- Maurice (1987)
- A Room with a View (1986)
- Arn: The Knight Templar (2007)
- The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
- There's Something About Romcoms (2016)
- Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Hawkeye (2022)
- Victoria & Abdul (2017)
- Hampstead (2017)
- Postcards from the Edge (1990)
- Mindhorn (2016)
- Thunderpants (2002)
- Love's Kitchen (2011)
- George and the Dragon (2004)
- Eternal Return (2026)
- Viceroy's House (2017)
- Bright Young Things (2003)
- Jefferson in Paris (1995)
- Golden Years (2016)
- No Man's Land (2001)
- The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (2006)
- Blue Iguana (2018)
TV (10)
Where to start with Simon Callow
Four Weddings and a Funeral first, because Gareth is the performance that gives the film its weight and because it is the best known thing he has done. Follow it with A Room with a View, where he plays a clergyman with rather more enthusiasm than the character strictly requires, and where he is at his funniest on screen.
Amadeus is the prestige entry, and his scenes are the ones with the theatre in them. Shakespeare in Love hands him bureaucratic pomposity, a register he could do in his sleep. Maurice is for viewers who want the full Forster set. And to see how wide the net has been thrown, Notting Hill has him uncredited as himself while Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls has him doing broad villainy for an American studio. Both are more entertaining than they sound.