My Favourite British Actors
by lukeozade55 | created - 07 Feb 2015 | updated - 07 Feb 2015 | Public
1. David Jason
Actor | Only Fools and Horses
David Jason was born in Edmonton, London, in 1940. He has become one of Britain's most famous, versatile and respected actors, who is most famous for his role in Only Fools and Horses (1981) as Del Boy. He made his debut in the series in 1981 and was still playing the same role up to the Christmas ...
2. Hugh Grant
Actor | Love Actually
Hugh Grant, one of Britain's best known faces, has been equally entertaining on-screen as well as in real life, and has had enough sense of humor to survive a media frenzy. He is known for his roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), with Andie MacDowell, Notting Hill (1999), opposite Julia ...
3. Patrick Stewart
Actor | Logan
Sir Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England, to Gladys (Barrowclough), a textile worker and weaver, and Alfred Stewart, who was in the army. He was a member of various local drama groups from about age 12. He left school at age 15 to work as a junior reporter on a local paper; he ...
4. Bob Hoskins
Actor | The Long Good Friday
Bob Hoskins was described by the director John Mackenzie as "an actor from the British tradition but with an almost American approach, an instinctive approach to acting and knowing how to work with the camera". He was born on October 26, 1942, in Bury St. Edmund's, Suffolk, where his mother was ...
My Favourite Bob Hoskins film would have to be The Long Good Friday.
5. Michael Caine
Actor | The Dark Knight
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of ...
6. Colin Firth
Actor | A Single Man
Colin Andrew Firth was born into an academic family in Grayshott, Hampshire, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at the Open University, and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, lectured on history at Winchester University College (formerly King Alfred's...
7. Roger Moore
Actor | Moonraker
Roger Moore will perhaps always be remembered as the man who replaced Sean Connery in the James Bond series, arguably something he never lived down.
Roger George Moore was born on October 14, 1927 in Stockwell, London, England, the son of Lillian (Pope) and George Alfred Moore, a policeman. His ...
8. Daniel Craig
Actor | Casino Royale
One of the British theatre's most famous faces, Daniel Craig, who waited tables as a struggling teenage actor with the National Youth Theatre, has gone on to star as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).
He was born ...
9. Sean Connery
Actor | The Rock
The tall, handsome and muscular Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known as the original actor to portray James Bond in the hugely successful movie franchise, starring in seven films between 1962 and 1983. Some believed that such a career-defining role might leave him unable to escape it, but he ...
10. Bill Nighy
Actor | Love Actually
Bill Nighy is an award-winning British character actor. He was born William Francis Nighy on December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, England, to Catherine Josephine (Whittaker), a psychiatric nurse from Glasgow, and Alfred Martin Nighy, who was English-born and managed a garage in Croydon.
At school,...
11. Alan Rickman
Actor | Die Hard
Alan Rickman was born on a council estate in Acton, West London, to Margaret Doreen Rose (Bartlett), of English and Welsh descent, and Bernard Rickman, of Irish descent, who worked at a factory. Alan Rickman had an older brother (David), a younger brother (Michael), and a younger sister (Sheila). ...
12. John Cleese
Actor | A Fish Called Wanda
John Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman; but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he ...
13. Ray Winstone
Actor | The Departed
Ray Winstone was born on February 19, 1957, in Hackney Hospital in London, England, to Margaret (Richardson) and Raymond J. Winstone. He moved to Enfield, at age seven, where his parents had a fruit and vegetable business. He started boxing at the age of twelve at the famous Repton Amateur Boxing ...
14. Tom Wilkinson
Actor | Michael Clayton
Popular British character actor Tom Wilkinson was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, and came from a long line of urban farmers. He was the son of Marjorie (Percival) and Thomas Wilkinson. Economic hardships forced his family to move to Canada for a few years when Wilkinson was a child; then, ...
15. Hugh Laurie
Actor | House M.D.
Hugh was born in Oxford, England on June 11, 1959, to Patricia (Laidlaw) and William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, a doctor, both of Scottish descent. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Son of an Olympic gold medalist in the sport, he rowed for the England youth team (1977) and for ...
16. Liam Neeson
Actor | Kinsey
Liam Neeson was born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, to Katherine (Brown), a cook, and Bernard Neeson, a school caretaker. He was raised in a Catholic household. During his early years, Liam worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, a truck driver, an assistant architect and an ...
17. Ian McKellen
Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery ...
18. Denholm Elliott
Actor | A Room with a View
Denholm entered RADA at the age of 17, but dropped out after a year having hated every minute being there. He joined the RAF in 1940, trained as a gunner/radio operator, and was shot down over Germany in 1942. In the POW camp he and his fellow prisoners staged various productions in a theatre ...
19. Richard Harris
Actor | Unforgiven
Richard St John Harris was born on October 1, 1930 in Limerick, Ireland, to a farming family, one of nine children born to Mildred (Harty) and Ivan Harris. He attended Crescent College, a Jesuit school, and was an excellent rugby player, with a strong passion for literature. Unfortunately, a bout ...
20. John Hurt
Actor | Nineteen Eighty-Four
One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend ...
21. Jason Statham
Actor | Crank
Jason Statham was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, to Eileen (Yates), a dancer, and Barry Statham, a street merchant and lounge singer. He was a Diver on the British National Diving Team and finished twelfth in the World Championships in 1992. He has also been a fashion model, black market salesman ...
22. Robert Carlyle
Actor | The Full Monty
Robert Carlyle was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland, to Elizabeth, a bus company employee, and Joseph Carlyle, a painter and decorator. He was raised by his father after his mother left him when he was four. At the age of 21, after reading Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," he enrolled in acting ...
23. Rex Harrison
Actor | My Fair Lady
Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the ...
24. Stan Laurel
Actor | Saps at Sea
Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles ...
25. Laurence Olivier
Actor | Sleuth
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High ...
26. David Niven
Actor | Murder by Death
His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military...
27. Peter Sellers
Actor | Being There
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his ...
28. Michael Palin
Writer | Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Michael Palin is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter. He was one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python.
After the Monty Python television series ended in 1974, the Palin/Jones team worked on Ripping Yarns, an intermittent television comedy series broadcast over ...
29. Norman Wisdom
Actor | A Stitch in Time
Sir Norman Wisdom has become the great British clown in the mold of Sir Charles Chaplin with his little man in the ill fitting suit and cloth cap. His character is an everyman, much put upon but struggling through to a (usually) happy ending. He was brought up in an orphanage after his mother died ...
30. Richard Attenborough
Actor | Jurassic Park
Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a ...
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