Paul Copley was born in 1944 in West Yorkshire. He seems to specialise in North Country types. Most recent appearance was in “Downton Abbey”. Films include “A Bridge Too Far” in 1977, “Zulu Dawn” and “The Remains of the Day”. He has an extensive CV including television and the stage. He is married to actress Natasha Pyne.
As an actor, Khan-Din participated in some 20 British films and TV series in the late 1980s and the 1990s. He made his film debut in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), but is perhaps best known for the role of Sammy in Hanif Kureishi‘s Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and as one of the leading characters in the film Idiot from 1992.
In the late 1990s, Kahn-Din began writing plays, the first was East is East (1997) for the Royal Court Theatre, was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Comedy.[1]The play draws very much from Kahn-Din’s own childhood in Salford, where he grew up in a large family with a British Pakistani father and a white British mother. In interviews, he has stated that the young boy Sajid Khan is a self-portrait, and that Sajid’s parents are very exact portraits of his own parents.[2][3]
In 2007 Rafta, Rafta…, a play Kahn-Din wrote, opened at the Lyttelton stage of the Royal National Theatre in London. It is a comic adaptation of the 1963 Bill Naughton play, All in Good Time. The play is set in the working class English town of Bolton, and examines a story of marital difficulties within an immigrant Indian family. The play has since opened both in New York at the New Group in 2008, and at the HuM Theatre in Singapore in 2010. In 2012, a film adaption of Rafta, Rafta… was released under the title All in Good Time, it directed by Nigel Cole and with Reece Ritchie in the leading role.[5][6]
In 2010, West is West, a sequel to East is East, premiered at film festivals in Toronto and London, with a wide UK release scheduled for February 2010.[3] In this film, the story is set in 1975, four years after the story in ‘East is East. Father George Khan is worried that his youngest son, Sajid, now 15, is turning his back on his Pakistani heritage, so he decides to take him for a visit to Pakistan.[7]
Dennis Lill was born in 1942 in Hamilton, New Zealand. Most of his career has been based in the U.K. He made his television debut in “Crossroads” in 1964. He had a major role in the mini-series “Fall of Eagles” in 1974. Other credits include series such as “The Regiment” and “Warship and movies such as “The Eagle Has Landed” in 1976.
Sean Arnold is best known for his role as ‘Crozier’ the Chief Inspector in “Bergerac” which ran from 1981 until 1990. He was bron in Gloucestershire in 1941. Other credits include “North Sea Hijack” in 1979, “Hunters of the Deep” and “Fuel”. Sean Arnold died in 2020 at the age of 79.
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Elizabeth Counsell was born in 1942 in Windsor. She is the daughter of actress Mary Kerridge. Among Ms Counsell’s credits are “The Mind Benders” in 1963, “From Russia With Love”, “The Intelligence Men”, “Claudia” and more recen tly “Song For Marion” with Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave.
Toby Stephens was born in 1969 in London. He is the son of actors Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith. He made his acting debut in 1992 in the miniseries “The Camomile Lawn”. He played the villian in the James Bond in “Die Another Day” in 2002. He also starred as ‘Rochester’ in “Jane Eyre” with Ruth Wilson.
TCM overview:
It was perhaps only natural that this second son of Sir Robert Stephens and Dame Maggie Smith should follow in his parents’ stead and pursue a career as an actor. Handsome, dark-haired Toby Stephens began to land key roles in stage and screen productions almost immediately after his 1991 graduation from LAMDA. He first made an impression with British TV audiences co-starring with Jennifer Ehle in “The Chamomile Lawn” in 1992, the same year he debuted on the big screen in “Orlando”.
Stephens went on to a distinguished stage career, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and becoming the youngest actor with the troupe to undertake the lead in the Bard’s “Coriolanus” (1994). Daring to step into the shadow of Marlon Brando, he tackled the role of Stanley Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange in the 1996 Peter Hall-staged London production of “A Streetcar Named Desire”. His rising status as a leading man was cemented with his turn as Orsino in “Twelfth Night” (1996), Trevor Nunn’s feature adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy, and as Gilbert Markham, the Yorkshire farmer who falls for a married woman, in the small screen version of Anne Bronte’s novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (also 1996). Although his next couple of films didn’t fare too well at the box office, Stephens earned mostly good notices for his work, whether playing an early 20th-century photographer in “Photographing Fairies” (1997) or 19th-century men in “Cousin Bette” (1998) or “Onegin” (1999). After making his Broadway debut playing twins in the farcical “Ring Around the Moon” in 1999, the actor was tapped to portray the young incarnation of director-star Clint Eastwood’s astronaut in “Space Cowboys” (2000). That same year, he tried to embody F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elusive titular character in the A&E version of “The Great Gatsby”, but while he cut the proper dashing figure, something was missing in his interpretation of the role. He fared better in his homeland playing a supporting role in the critically-acclaimed BBC2 presentation “Perfect Strangers” (2001) and a return to the stage alongside Dame Judi Dench in “The Royal Family”. Director Neil LaBute tapped Stephens to play a self-serving academic in “Possession” (2002) before the actor landed a part that reach his wide audience yet– the villainous Gustav Graves in “Die Another Day” (2002), the 20th James Bond film. Stephens held his own against Pierce Brosnan as 007, proving one of the more charismatic of the recent Bond bad guys and demonstrating a flair for physical combat in the action-packed fencing sequence with Brosnan.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Imogen Stubbs was born in 1961 in Northumberland. She is a graduate of RADA. Her film debut was in 1982 in “Privileged”. Other movies include “Jack & Sarah”, and “Dead Cool”. On television, she starred in her own series “Anna Lee”.
TCM overview:
A classically-trained, blonde beauty, Stubbs was educated at Oxford (where her classmates included Hugh Grant and director Michael Hoffman) and at RADA. Primarily known in England for her stage performances at the Ipswitch Repertory Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Among her more notable roles include the leads in the musicals “The Boyfriend” and “Cabaret” and such classical parts as Helena in “The Rover” the Queen to Jeremy Irons’ “Richard II” and the title role in George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan”. Stubbs won critical marks for her turn as Stella to Jessica Lange’s Blanche in Sir Peter Hall’s London production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1996-97).
Stubbs made an impressive debut as the reactive title character in the British-French co-production “Nanou” (1987), which briefly featured Daniel Day-Lewis as the heroine’s friend. Subsequently she offered a poignant performance in Piers Haggard’s “A Summer Story” (1988), a period drama which saw her cast as a young woman whose heart is broken by a caddish barrister (James Wilby) and won praise as a seductive Norse princess in Terry Jones’ “Erik the Viking” (1989). She seemed slightly miscast as a Senator’s daughter in her American feature debut, “True Colors” (1991) but bounced back in two 1995 films. She was briefly seen as Richard E Grant’s wife who dies in childbirth in “Jack and Sarah” and was Emma Thompson’s rival for Hugh Grant’s affection in Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility”. Stubbs co-starred as Viola in “Twelfth Night” (1996), directed by her husband Trevor Nunn.
Television has perhaps provided Stubbs with her widest audience. After co-starring in the British miniseries “The Rainbow” (shown in the US in 1989 on A&E), she tackled the lead in a series of TV-movies centering on a former policewoman now working as a private detective. As “Anna Lee”, Stubbs garnered critical praise and positive comparisons with Helen Mirren’s “Prime Suspect” character, Jane Tennison. To date, six installments have been aired in the US on A&E.
