Trivia: Left university to perform with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Was narrator of BBC series Airport between 1996 and 2005. Appointed an OBE in 2010. Awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Plymouth in 2012. Patron of The Mare and Foal Sanctuary.

Trivia: Joined the Stockton Youth Theatre as a 14-year-old. Performed in the award-winning Dead Fish at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Reprised his role in the touring production of Dead Fish throughout 1994 and 1995. Played the role of DS Gavin Troy in Midsomer Murders between 1998 and 2003. Ran for Leukaemia Research in the 2003 Great north Run.

Trivia: Starred in the 1975 Birmingham Rep production of Equus. Played Sasha in a 1978 production of Ivanov at the Old Vic. Portrayed the role of Joyce Barnaby in Midsomer Murders between 1997 and 2011. Performed in a world tour of Hamlet throughout 1978, alongside Sir Derek Jacobi. Is a Drama tutor at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Trivia: Joined the National Youth Theatre as a teenager. Won the Alec Clunes award for Best Actor while studying drama at LAMDA. In 1998, performed in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Herbal Bed. Between 2005 and 2017, played DI Ben Jones in ITV Drama Midsomer Murders. In 2012, was nominated for the Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series award at the Monte Carlo TV Festival for his role in Midsomer Murders.

Trivia: At the age of nine, presented radio broadcasts for Children's Hour. Worked as a stage hand at the Birmingham Rep at the age of 16. Moved to London to become an actor immediately upon getting his O-Levels. Worked as a fight director and stunt man throughout the 1960s, under the name 'Jack Barry'. Portrayed Dr George Bullard in Midsomer Murders from 1998 to 2011.

Trivia: Scottish-born Clive Russell is six and a half feet of bone and sinew. Add to his imposing stage presence his impressive acting skill and you have a colossal acting machine that can cry, bend steel, and recite Shakespeare. Russell has used his attributes to play Helfdane the Large in The Thirteenth Warrior, Ajax the Great in Troilus and Cressida, and blacksmith Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. For his portrayal of a gigantic but gentle ex-coal miner in the acclaimed Margaret's Museum, Russell earned a Canadian Academy Award nomination for best actor. Russell's appetite for acting is as big as he is. Between 1997 and 2001, he completed 24 films in addition to TV and other projects, including such high-profile productions as The Mists of Avalon (TV miniseries), Oliver Twist (TV miniseries), and Oscar and Lucinda. No, he probably won't replace Sean Connery as Scotland's most famous actor. But he certainly deserves recognition as one of Scotland's best actors -- right up there among Connery, Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott, and Robert Carlyle.Russell first performed before an audience in 1960 on the Shari Lewis Show. But it was not until 1980 that he got his first real acting job -- performing on the London stage as the superintendent in Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo's satire The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, about police corruption in Italy. The reviews were good, and he reprised that role for television in 1983. After further honing his skills in various British TV productions and a handful of films -- including Jute City, The Power of One, The Hawk, and Seconds Out -- Russell received exposure before international audiences as Caleb Garth in the celebrated BBC miniseries Middlemarch, based on the George Eliot novel of the same name. A year later, he fell in love on the movie screen with Helena Bonham Carter in Margaret's Museum, earning laudatory reviews worldwide. Clive Russell had arrived. After more TV roles and another film, Russell played Ralph Fiennes' father in another critically acclaimed film, Oscar and Lucinda. Growing recognition of his acting skills then brought him plum roles in four major TV miniseries: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Railway Children, and The Mists of Avalon. In the same year that he made Mists, Russell also performed in The Emperor's New Clothes, starring Ian Holm as Napoleon. In 2002, his career reached new heights when he took on a role in a BBC/Columbia Tristar production about a mountain-rescue team in Scotland.

Trivia: A psychology student in her native South Africa, slim, fragile-looking leading lady Alice Krige decided upon an acting career upon moving to London. Krige studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama (at 22, she was nearly the oldest student there), then established her reputation on stage. Her first film appearance was as Sybil, the casual lady friend of Olympic athlete Ben Cross, in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire (1981). Next she co-starred in Ghost Story as the "avenging angel" who brings well-deserved grief to elderly Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman. Her later film roles included Bathsheba in King David (1985) and Mary Godwin (aka Mary Shelley) in Haunted Summer (1988). Alice Krige has also been in more than her share of British and American made-for-TV movies, among them Baja, California (1984), Iran: Days of Crisis (1986) and Max and Helen (1990).

Trivia: The second child of actors Raymond Massey and Adrienne Allen, Anna Massey made her own film bow as the spunky daughter of Jack Hawkins in John Ford's Gideon's Day (1958). Anna was one of the few members of the female cast of the controversial Peeping Tom (1960) who was not murdered by psycho photographer Karl Boehm; conversely, she was the second victim of the necktie strangler in Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) (she's the one whose murder occurs off-camera, as Hitchcock dollies from a second-floor flat to the street below). Maturing into a versatile character actress in her 40s, Massey had an amazing facility for appearing in TV redos of earlier films: she played Miss Ronberry in the 1979 remake of The Corn is Green, Mrs. Danvers in the 1981 remake of Rebecca, and Betsy in the 1985 remake of Anna Karenina. In 1994, Anna Massey was among the stars of the weekly British sitcom Nice Day at the Office.

Trivia: Wrote plays as a child that he performed with friends. Archbishop Rowan Williams was one of his teachers when he attended the University of Cambridge. Worked with the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company after college. First met his wife, Lulu, when they were in their teens. They drifted apart, but became reacquainted during their 30s. Made his professional acting debut in 1986 as an understudy to Ralph Fiennes in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Supports Merlin, a medical charity, and Scene & Heard, a mentoring program that pairs inner-city children from Somers Town, London, with theatre professionals.

Trivia: Gangling Scottish character actor Graham Crowden seemed born to play over-sanctimonious priests, looney scientists and cadaverous undertakers. Following Shakespearean stage work, Crowden made his film bow in 1961's Why Bother to Knock? He became a favorite of film director Lindsay Anderson, who showed Crowden to excellent if bizarre advantage in such films as If (1969), O' Lucky Man! (1973) (in several roles) and Brittania Hospital (1982). Among Graham Crowden's non-Lindsay Anderson films were The Ruling Class (1973), The Little Prince (1974), Jabberwocky (1981), For Your Eyes Only (1982) and The Company of Wolves (1984).

Trivia: Made her professional debut in the 1988 television film The Rainbow. Played the role of Harper in the 1993 Royal National Theatre production of Angels in America. Played Dr. Laura Hobson in Inspector Morse from 1995 to 2000, reprising her role in the spin-off Lewis between 2006 and 2015. Nominated for a 1997 Olivier Award for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. As of 2019, teaches at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Trivia: Since 1963, Gemma Jones has been one of the most esteemed character actresses in British film and theater. Not until 1995, however, did she receive widespread recognition outside the U.K. That was the year she played the mother of two darlings of the modern cinema, Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, in their roles as the Dashwood sisters in director Ang Lee's Oscar-winning adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. In 1997, Jones performed in another acclaimed film, Wilde, as Lady Queensbury, the woman who accused 19th century Irish author Oscar Wilde of corrupting her son, thereby setting in motion a notorious trial that ruined Wilde. Then good got better for Jones. Between 1999 and 2001, she played in three other popular productions that won numerous awards: first as Grace Winslow opposite Nigel Hawthorne in David Mamet's production of The Winslow Boy, then as Elizabeth Harrison in Charles Sturridge's production of Longitude, and finally as Mrs. Pam Jones in Sharon Maguire's production of Bridget Jones' Diary. By 2002, Gemma Jones was at work filming what promised to be one of the biggest box-office draws of the year, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which she portrays Madame Pomfrey, the maker of magical healing potions.The daughter of British actor Griffth Jones, Gemma Jones was born Jennifer Jones on December 4, 1942, in London. Because acting was in her blood, it was no surprise when she enrolled in the British Academy of Dramatic Art to be molded into an actress in the classic tradition. Shortly after graduation, she performed in Baal on the same stage with Peter O'Toole. After other stage and TV productions, she debuted on film in director Ken Russell's The Devils in 1971, then performed in several TV series, including The Duchess of Duke Street, a popular 1976 series in Britain that starred her as "London's best cook." Between film and TV roles, she also performed on the stage as a member of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in such Shakespeare plays as A Winter's Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. She also acted in productions of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mount Morgan, and Henrik Ibsen's The Masterbuilder. When stardom arrived in 1995 with Sense and Sensibility, she continued to perform in lesser known but highly praised productions, including The Feast of July, Jane Eyre, The Theory of Flight, and Captain Jack. Her 2002 role in the Harry Potter film promises to make her a household name among children as well as adults -- perhaps for decades to come.

Trivia: Grew up in Old Strafford, England, United Kingdom.Dreamed to be a firewoman when she was a child.Wanted to pursue a career in archeology.First major part was in a play at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London, United Kingdom.Has a preference for Vintage clothing.Maintains a lifelong friendship with actress Emma Thompson.

Trivia: All expectations of staid English cinema aside, British actor Adrian Scarborough often forsook more conservative projects to essay a series of genial supporting roles (usually a common everyman) in edgy, occasionally provocative material, nearly always in his native U.K. His resumé includes a turn as biographer Daniel Farson in John Maybury's Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), garage owner Frank (the angelic title character's brother-in-law) in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake (2004), and a minor role in Richard Eyre's visceral psychological drama Notes on a Scandal (2006). Scarborough also tackled period work with a bit part in Shekhar Kapur's period drama Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).