Callow was born on 15 June 1949 in Streatham, south London, the son of Yvonne Mary (née Guise), a secretary and Neil Francis Callow, a businessman.[2] His father was of French descent and his mother was of Danish and German ancestry.[3] His father left when Simon was eighteen months old, and he was brought up by his mother and grandmothers. He and his mother travelled to Northern Rhodesia (now called Zambia) when he was nine to try and reconcile with his father. This did not happen, and Callow was sent for three years to boarding school in South Africa. He and his mother returned to Britain when he was twelve. He was raised as a Catholic.[3] Callow was a student at the London Oratory School in west Brompton,[4] and then went on to study briefly at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland,[5] where he was active in the gay liberation movement.[5] He gave up his degree course after a year to take a three-year acting course at the Drama Centre London.[4]
Career
Acting
Callow's immersion in the theatre began after he wrote a fan letter to Sir Laurence Olivier, the artistic director of the National Theatre, and received a response suggesting he join their box-office staff. While watching actors rehearse, he realised he wanted to act.[6]
Callow appeared as Verlaine in Total Eclipse (1982), Lord Foppington in The Relapse (1983) and the title role in Faust (1988) at the Lyric Hammersmith, where he also directed The Infernal Machine (with Dame Maggie Smith) in 1986.[10] In 1985, he played Molina in Kiss of the Spiderwoman at the Bush Theatre, London.[10] He played Mozart in the premiere of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the National Theatre (1979), also appearing in the 1983 BBC original cast radio production.[10] He later wrote of having "discovered Mozart quite early: the operas, the symphonies, the concertos, the wind serenades were all very much part of my musical landscape when I was asked to play the part of the composer in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus; possibly this was one of the reasons I got the job."[11] He appeared at the National Theatre as Orlando in As You Like It (1979) and Fulganzio in Life of Galileo (1980).[10]
Callow appeared with Saeed Jaffrey in the 1994 British television drama series Little Napoleons, playing a scheming Conservativecouncillor in local government. In 1996, Callow directed Cantabile in three musical pieces (Commuting, The Waiter's Revenge, Ricercare No. 4) composed by his friend Stephen Oliver. Ricercare No. 4 was commissioned by Callow especially for Cantabile. He voice-acted the sly and traitorous Wolfgang in Shoebox Zoo. In 2004, he appeared on a Comic Relief episode of Little Britain for charity causes. In 2006, he wrote a piece for the BBC1 programme This Week bemoaning the lack of characters in modern politics. He has starred as Count Fosco, the villain of Wilkie Collins's novel The Woman in White, in film (1997) and on stage (2005, in the Andrew Lloyd Webbermusical in the West End).
Callow starred in the three-part original Gold comedy The Rebel in 2016.[12]
From June to November 2010, he appeared in a national tour of a new one-man play, Shakespeare: the Man from Stratford, written by Jonathan Bate, directed by Tom Cairns, and produced by the Ambassador Theatre Group. The play was renamed Being Shakespeare for its West End debut at the Trafalgar Studios, where it opened on 15 June 2011. It was revived at the same theatre in March 2012, prior to a run in New York City and Chicago. In March 2014, it returned to the West End, this time at the Harold Pinter Theatre.[15]
In October 2014, Callow appeared in a comedy sketch made for Channel 4'sThe Feeling Nuts Comedy Night to raise awareness of testicular cancer. The same year, he played the recurring role of the fictional Duke of Sandringham in the Starz period TV series, Outlander.[16]
He made his first film appearance in 1984 as Schikaneder in Amadeus. The following year, he appeared as the Reverend Mr. Beebe in A Room with a View. His first television role was in the Carry On Laughing episode "Orgy and Bess" in 1975, but it was cut from the final print. He starred in several series of the Channel 4 situation comedy Chance in a Million, as Tom Chance, an eccentric individual to whom coincidences happened regularly. Roles like this and his part in Four Weddings and a Funeral brought him to a wider audience.[19] Callow portrayed Pliny the Elder in CBBC's 2007 children's drama series, Roman Mysteries in the episode "The Secrets of Vesuvius". He played Armand Duquesne in Marvel's Hawkeye on Disney+.[20]
Directing
Callow also directed plays and wrote: his Being An Actor (1984) was a critique of 'director dominated' theatre, in addition to containing autobiographical sections relating to his early career as an actor. In 1992, he directed the play Shades by Sharman MacDonald and the musical My Fair Lady, featuring costumes designed by Jasper Conran.[21] In 1995, he directed a stage version of the classic French film Les Enfants du Paradis for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In December 2004, he hosted the London Gay Men's Chorus Christmas Show, Make the Yuletide Gay at the Barbican Centre in London. He is currently one of the patrons of the Michael Chekhov Studio London.
In July 2006, the London Oratory School Schola announced Callow as one of their new patrons. In November 2007, he threatened to resign the post over controversy surrounding the Terrence Higgins Trust (an AIDS charity of which Callow is also a patron). Other patrons of the Catholic choir are Princess Michael of Kent and the leading Scottish composer James MacMillan. He reprised his role as Wolfgang in Shoebox Zoo and voice-acted the wild and action-seeking Hunter, as well.[when?]
Author
Callow has written biographies of Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, and Richard Wagner. He has also written an anthology of Shakespeare passages, Shakespeare on Love, and contributed to Cambridge's Actors on Shakespeare series.
Callow played Stroganoff in the 1987 Saturday Night Theatre production of A Bullet in the Ballet dramatised by Pat Hooker on BBC Radio 4.[29]
Personal life
Callow came out as gay in his 1984 book Being An Actor. He was listed 28th in The Independent's 2007 listing of the most influential gay men and women in the UK.[30] He married Sebastian Fox in June 2016.[31][32]
In an interview, Callow stated:
I'm not really an activist, although I am aware that there are some political acts one can do that actually make a difference and I think my coming out as a gay man was probably one of the most valuable things I've done in my life. I don't think any actor had done so voluntarily and I think it helped to change the culture.[33]
In August 2014, Callow was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[34]
^Monelle, Raymond. Review of Die Fledermaus at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. Opera, December 1988, Vol.39 No.12, p1491-92.
^Allison, John. II trittico and The Reluctant Highwayman, The Broomhill Trust. Opera, October 1995, Vol.46 No.10, p1233-35.
^Maddocks, Fiona. "Le roi malgré lui: Grange Park Opera". Opera, September 2003, pp. 1130-31. For this production the dialogue was prepared by Callow from the original Ancelot play.
^Milnes, Rodney. Review of Carmen Jones at the Old Vic. Opera, June 1991, Vol.42, No.6, p727-728.