Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis is an actor, born 1978.
Tom Ellis came out of Cardiff and into the standard British character-actor pipeline: a police constable in Vera Drake, John Browdie in a 2001 Nicholas Nickleby, a soldier in Buffalo Soldiers, early television parts in Waking the Dead and Messiah. The first job that made him familiar was comic, playing Gary Preston in the BBC sitcom Miranda from 2009 to 2015, where his function was to be so straightforwardly likeable that the farce had something to bounce off.
Lucifer, from 2016 to 2021, changed the scale. The role works because Ellis plays delight rather than menace: the character is having a wonderful time, and the show's tension comes from waiting for the moment he stops enjoying himself. It is a harder trick than the costume suggests, and it survived the series moving from Fox to Netflix mid-run, which tells you how much of the appeal was carried by the lead.
He had already shown the darker version. Cenred in Merlin and Mark Etches in The Fades are both cold, and the horror series in particular used him against type well before anyone was thinking about devils. Since Lucifer he has taken the romantic-comedy route in Isn't It Romantic and Players, played Oliver in Tell Me Lies, joined The Thursday Murder Club, appeared as Titch Wilde in Washington Black, and moved into American network drama as Colin Glass in CIA.
Movies (9)
TV (18)
- Lucifer (2016)
- Merlin (2008)
- Waking the Dead (2001)
- CIA (2026)
- Tell Me Lies (2022)
- Miranda (2009)
- Exploding Kittens (2024)
- Messiah (2001)
- Wild West (2002)
- The Fades (2011)
- Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001)
- ShakespeaRe-Told (2005)
- No Angels (2004)
- Love Soup (2005)
- Washington Black (2025)
- Spine Chillers (2003)
- Suburban Shootout (2006)
- Rush (2014)
Where to start with Tom Ellis
Nobody arrives at this page for anything except Lucifer, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Watch the first two episodes: if the specific quality of his enjoyment lands for you, there are five more years of it, and if it does not, nothing else here will convert you.
Miranda is the better piece of comic acting, precisely because he has no jokes and has to make sincerity funny. The Fades is the one genuine discovery in his catalogue, a short-lived British horror series that deserved more, and Merlin has him playing straightforwardly menacing.
Of the recent work, Washington Black is the most ambitious and The Thursday Murder Club the most widely seen. Isn't It Romantic is a pleasant ninety minutes if you want the charm with nothing underneath it.
Lucifer and the genre work
Six seasons as the devil running a nightclub, a show Fox cancelled and Netflix rescued after a fan campaign. The earlier British genre and crime television is where he was learning to do this.
The British comedy
Miranda is the best comic use of him anyone has managed, playing the object of affection as a genuinely decent and slightly dim man. The rest is the British sitcom work from before Lucifer.
The films and recent work
Vera Drake is the Mike Leigh and the most serious thing here. The recent work is a mix of studio comedy and prestige adaptation, and The Thursday Murder Club is the biggest of them.