Simon Jones (actor)
Encyclopedia
Simon Jones is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, most famous for his appearances in the television
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy broadcast in January and February 1981 on BBC Two...

 and radio
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series written by Douglas Adams . It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards on global short wave radio on the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the U.S. and CBC Radio in...

 series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...

, in which he played the lead role of Arthur Dent
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....

 from 1978 to 2005. Its author Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

 later said that he wrote the part of Arthur Dent
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....

 with Simon Jones in mind.

He was featured in the 2005 movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a 2005 comic science fiction film based on the book of the same name by Douglas Adams. Shooting was completed in August 2004 and the movie was released on April 28, 2005 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and on the following day in Canada and the United...

 as a cameo role.

Life and Career

As well as The Hitchhiker's Guide, Jones also appeared in various other TV series, including Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited (TV serial)
Brideshead Revisited is a 1981 British television serial produced by Granada Television for broadcast by the ITV network. The teleplay is based on Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited...

(in which he played the Earl of Brideshead --'Bridey'--, the heir to the Marquess of Marchmain), and the second series of Blackadder
Blackadder
Blackadder is the name that encompassed four series of a BBC1 historical sitcom, along with several one-off instalments. All television programme episodes starred Rowan Atkinson as anti-hero Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Blackadder's dogsbody, Baldrick...

(playing Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....

). His films have included Club Paradise
Club Paradise
Club Paradise is a 1986 American comedy film directed by Harold Ramis starring Robin Williams, Peter O'Toole, and Jimmy Cliff. The film reunites director/co-writer Ramis with most of his SCTV co-stars -- SCTV cast members Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, and Robin Duke play...

, Privates on Parade
Privates on Parade
Privates on Parade: A Play with Songs in Two Acts is a 1977 farce by English playwright Peter Nichols , with music by Denis King.-Plot:...

, Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street (1994 film)
Miracle on 34th Street is a 1994 American fantasy film directed by Les Mayfield. It is the fourth remake of the original 1947 film. Like the original, this film was released by 20th Century Fox...

, Green Card
Green Card (film)
Green Card is a 1990 romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by Peter Weir and starring Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. The screenplay focuses on an American woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a Frenchman so he can obtain a green card and remain in the United...

, Griffin & Phoenix and The Devil's Own
The Devil's Own
The Devil's Own is a 1997 action thriller movie starring Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Rubén Blades, Natascha McElhone, Julia Stiles and Treat Williams. It was the final film directed by Alan J...

.

He studied at Cambridge University and was a member of the Footlights
Footlights
Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, commonly referred to simply as the Footlights, is an amateur theatrical club in Cambridge, England, founded in 1883 and run by the students of Cambridge University....

, where he met Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

. This led to Jones being cast in Out of the Trees
Out of the Trees
Out of the Trees is a 1975 television sketch show pilot written by Graham Chapman, Douglas Adams and Bernard McKenna that was broadcast on BBC 2 in 1976. The show shared some of the stream-of-consciousness style of Monty Python's Flying Circus, of which Chapman was a member...

and later The Hitchhiker's Guide and the film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. In The Meaning of Life Jones had a minor role as one of the guests at the dinner party. He has also appeared in some of the solo film projects of the members of Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

: American Friends
American Friends
American Friends is a 1991 film starring Michael Palin. It was written by Palin and Tristram Powell, and directed by Powell.-Plot:Palin plays Francis Ashby, a senior Oxford professor on holiday in the Swiss Alps in 1861. There he meets the American Caroline Hartley and her 18-year old ward Elinor...

, Brazil
Brazil (film)
Brazil is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard and stars Jonathan Pryce. The film also features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm...

and 12 Monkeys.

Jones has appeared in several Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 plays, including The Real Thing
The Real Thing (play)
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....

, as Max (1985), Benefactors
Benefactors (play)
Benefactors is a 1984 play by Michael Frayn. It is set in the 1960s and concerns an idealistic architect David and his wife Jane and their relationship with the cynical Colin and his wife Sheila. David is attempting to build some new homes to replace the slum housing of Basuto Road and is gradually...

, as Colin (1985), Getting Married
Getting Married
Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirises the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalising divorce laws.- External...

, as Reginald Bridgenorth (1991), Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

, as Elyot Chase (1992), The Real Inspector Hound, as Moon, and The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, as Hamlet, which played together in (1992), The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on May 8, 1777.The prologue, written by David Garrick, commends the play, its subject, and its author to the audience...

, as Joseph Surface (1995), Ring Round the Moon
Ring Round the Moon
Ring Round the Moon is a 1950 adaptation by the English dramatist Christopher Fry of Jean Anouilh's Invitation to the Castle . Peter Brook commissioned Fry to adapt the play and the first production of Ring Round the Moon was given at the Globe Theatre...

, as Romainville (1999) and Waiting in the Wings
Waiting in the Wings (play)
Waiting in the Wings is a play by Noël Coward. Set in a retirement home for actresses, it focuses on a feud between residents Lotta Bainbridge and May Davenport, who once both loved the same man.-Background:...

, as Perry Lascoe (1999). In 2009 he played in Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...

, as Dr. Bradman, with Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

 and Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...

. Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 he has a long list of credits, and was nominated for the 1990 Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

 Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for his role in Privates on Parade
Privates on Parade
Privates on Parade: A Play with Songs in Two Acts is a 1977 farce by English playwright Peter Nichols , with music by Denis King.-Plot:...

.

In Regional theatre
Regional theatre in the United States
Regional theaters, or resident theaters, in the United States are professional or semi-professional, theater companies that produce their own seasons. The term regional theatre most often refers to professional theatres outside of New York City...

 at the Guthrie Theater
Guthrie Theater
The Guthrie Theater is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the result of the desire of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler to create a resident acting company that would produce and perform the classics in...

, Minneapolis, Simon starred as Christopher Gore in the American premier of Brian Friel
Brian Friel
Brian Friel is an Irish dramatist, author and director of the Field Day Theatre Company. He is considered to be the greatest living English-language dramatist, hailed by the English-speaking world as an "Irish Chekhov" and "the universally accented voice of Ireland"...

's The Home Place
The Home Place
The Home Place is a play written by Brian Friel that first premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin on 1 February 2005. After a sold-out season at the Gate it transferred to London's West End on 25 May 2005, where it won the 2005 Evening Standard Award for Best Play, and made its American premiere at...

in late 2007. He returned there in late 2008 to portray C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands.

Jones is also a voice actor and audiobook presenter, with more than 70 titles to his credit. Among them are:
  • The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul for Simon and Schuster Audioworks for the US market
  • Star Trek: Cacophony, playing Lt. Commander Stewart Mulligan in an original "Captain Sulu
    Hikaru Sulu
    Hikaru Sulu is a character in the Star Trek media franchise. First portrayed by George Takei in the original Star Trek series, Sulu also appears in the animated Star Trek series, the first six Star Trek movies, one episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and in numerous books, comics, and video games...

     Adventures" audio programme, again for Simon and Schuster
  • The Salmon of Doubt
    The Salmon of Doubt
    The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously published and unpublished material by Douglas Adams...

    , for New Millennium Audio
  • Douglas Adams at the BBC
    Douglas Adams at the BBC
    Douglas Adams at the BBC is a three CD set released by BBC Audio in 2004 . By using extracts from many radio and TV productions, the three discs cover Douglas Adams's association with BBC Radio and TV from 1974 to 2001, and also include tributes to Adams that were transmitted between 2001 and 2003...

    , for BBC Audio
  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand
    The Amulet of Samarkand
    The Amulet of Samarkand is the first book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy written by Jonathan Stroud. It is well known for its liberal use of footnotes to voice the title character's sarcastic comments, as well as story background.-Plot introduction:...

    , The Golem's Eye
    The Golem's Eye
    The Golem's Eye is the second book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy written by Jonathan Stroud.- Plot :The book begins two years after the events of The Amulet of Samarkand. Nathaniel is apprenticed to the Minister of Security, Jessica Whitwell; and is working as an understudy to the Minister of Internal...

    , Ptolemy's Gate
    Ptolemy's Gate
    Ptolemy's Gate is the third book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, written by Jonathan Stroud. It was released in the UK in September 2005, and in the US in December of the same year.- Plot introduction :...

    , The Ring of Solomon
    The Ring of Solomon
    The Ring of Solomon is a fantasy novel, a prequel to the Bartimaeus Trilogy, written by Jonathan Stroud. It was first published in 2010 and is set in a fantasy version of ancient Jerusalem.-Plot introduction:It is the year 950 B.C.E...



In 2003, he reprised his role as Arthur Dent in a new radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases
The Tertiary Phase, Quandary Phase and Quintessential Phase are radio adaptations of the books Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless produced in 2003 and 2004 by Above the Title Productions for BBC Radio 4...

. The same year he was involved in the filming of the movie version of the first novel
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a 2005 comic science fiction film based on the book of the same name by Douglas Adams. Shooting was completed in August 2004 and the movie was released on April 28, 2005 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and on the following day in Canada and the United...

, making a brief cameo appearance in the role of the holographic
Holography
Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that when an imaging system is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even when the object is no longer present...

 Magrathean answering machine/automated defence system.

His 2006 audio book
Audio book
An audiobook or audio book is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine.Spoken audio has been available in schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word albums were made prior to the...

 reading of Mitch Cullin's
Mitch Cullin
Mitch Cullin is an American writer of Scotch-Irish and Cherokee descent. He is the author of seven novels, and one short story collection. He currently resides in Arcadia, California and Tokyo, Japan with his partner and frequent collaborator Peter I. Chang...

 A Slight Trick of the Mind
A Slight Trick of the Mind
A Slight Trick of the Mind is the seventh book by American author Mitch Cullin. It was first published in April 2005 as a hardcover edition from Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, and during the same month an unabridged audio book version read by Simon Jones was released on both compact disc and cassette by...

won the Audio Publishers Association's 2006 Audie Award
Audie Awards
The Audie Awards are annually bestowed annually in the USA for outstanding audiobooks. The Audies have been granted by the Audio Publishers Association, a not-for-profit trade organization, since 1996. The nominees are announced each year in January, and the winners are announced at a gala banquet...

 for Unabridged Fiction.

He was heard in 2009 as master detective Sexton Blake
Sexton Blake
Sexton Blake is a fictional detective who appeared in many British comic strips and novels throughout the 20th century. He was described by Professor Jeffrey Richards on the BBC in The Radio Detectives in 2003 as "the poor man's Sherlock Holmes"...

 on BBC Radio 2 in the six-part series, The Adventures of Sexton Blake!.

In addition to his work as an actor, Simon Jones is also a co-artistic director at New York Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 company The Actors Company Theatre (TACT), where he played the role of Jack in the play Home
Home (play)
Home is a play by David Storey. It is set in a mental asylum, although this fact is only revealed gradually as the story progresses.The five characters include seemingly benign Harry, highly opinionated Jack, cynical Marjorie, and flirtatious Kathleen...

by David Storey
David Storey
David Rhames Storey is an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player....

.

On 25 November 2009 Jones met his cousin Daniel Craig
Daniel Craig
Daniel Wroughton Craig is an English actor. His early film roles include Elizabeth, The Power of One, A Kid in King Arthur's Court and the television episodes Sharpe's Eagle, Zorro and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: Daredevils of the Desert...

 after Craig's performance on Broadway in A Steady Rain for the first time. Daniel Craig is the grandson of Simon's aunt.

Jones and his son Tim were hit by a car on 8 October 2010; though they suffered only bruises, he had to withdraw from the Actors Company Theater's production of Vaclav Havel’s Memorandum.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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