English actor and film director. A “forceful, commanding stage presence”, Jacobi’s talent was recognised by Laurence Olivier in the early 1960s. Since then, he has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, appearing in the critically praised adaptation I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA; the titular role in the medieval drama series Brother Cadfael and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm. Though principally a stage actor, Jacobi has appeared in a number of films, such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Gladiator (2000), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), The King’s Speech (2010), and the forthcoming Hippe Hippe Shake. In 1995, Jacobi was appointed the joint artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, with the West End impresario Duncan Weldon for a three-year tenure. In 2001, Jacobi won an Emmy Award by mocking his Shakespearean background in the television sitcom Frasier episode “The Show Must Go Off”, in which he played the world’s worst Shakespearean actor: the hammy, loud, untalented Jackson Hedley. Like Laurence Olivier, Jacobi holds two knighthoods, Danish and British.
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