Ben Daniels

Ben Daniels went from a state comprehensive in Nuneaton to LAMDA, the son of a Rolls-Royce engineer who later ran a grocer's and a mother with a children's clothes shop. He was born in Warwickshire in 1964, and the career that followed is a stage career first: an Olivier nomination for Never the Sinner (1991), further nominations for 900 Oneonta (1994) and Martin Yesterday (1998), and the 2001 Olivier for Best Supporting Actor in Arthur Miller's All My Sons.

On screen he has mostly worked in support, and he is exceptionally good at one register: absolute certainty. Josef Buhler in Conspiracy, sitting at the Wannsee table discussing an atrocity as an administrative problem. Bel Riose in Foundation, a general who believes in his empire. Father Marcus Brennan in The Exorcist, Santiago in Interview with the Vampire, General Merrick in Rogue One. These are men who have finished deliberating, and Daniels plays that state without ever going stiff.

His most technically interesting credit is Locke, where he is a voice on a telephone. The entire film is one man alone in a car, so his character has to be assembled out of sound alone, and it works.

Two other things are worth knowing. He played Tony in Beautiful Thing (1996), a landmark of British queer cinema, early in his screen career. And Lord Snowdon in The Crown is the most visible thing he has done, sardonic and wounded and by some distance the most fun he has had.