SIMON CALLOW (Simon Phillip Hugh Callow) CBE, born on this date, is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.

Callow rose to prominence originating the title role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1979 Peter Shaffer play Amadeus, for which he received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination. Callow joined the Miloš Forman 1984 film adaptation, this time portraying Emanuel Schikaneder. In 1992, Callow won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Musical for Carmen Jones. As an actor, he won acclaim for his comedic roles in A Room with a View and Four Weddings and a Funeral earning BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for each. Other notable roles include in Maurice, Howards End, Shakespeare in Love, and The Phantom of the Opera.

His television roles include Tom Chance in the Channel 4 series Chance in a Million and The Duke of Sandringham in the series Outlander from 2014 to 2016. He portrayed Napoleon in The Man of Destiny, and Charles Dickens in numerous television projects. He has also appeared on numerous shows such as Midsomer Murders, Rome, Angels in America, Doctor Who, Galavant, Hawkeye, and The Witcher.

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.

A devotee of classical music, he has contributed articles to Gramophone and The New York Review of Books. 

Callow was one of the first actors to declare their homosexuality  publicly, doing so 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. He married Sebastian Fox in June 2016.

In an interview, Callow stated: “I am not really an activist, although I am aware that there are some political acts that 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.“