Ian Bartholomew
Ian Bartholomew is an actor, born 1954.
Ian Bartholomew is primarily a stage and television actor, and the film credits gathered here are the smaller half of his working life. He is also a musician, which matters more than it usually would: he played Chitterlow in the revival of Half A Sixpence and was the Baker in the original West End production of Into the Woods, opposite Imelda Staunton as his wife. There is a serious musical theatre career running underneath the screen work.
British television has used him steadily since the early nineties, from Colin Dillon in Frank Stubbs Promotes to guest turns on DCI Banks and New Tricks and Cimber in the historical drama Empire. In March 2018 he joined the ITV soap Coronation Street as Geoff Metcalfe, which is where most British viewers now know him from, though the soap is not among the credits listed here.
On film he works in supporting parts and makes them register: Kristou in A Prayer for the Dying, a television historian in Denial, Bakker in Operation Fortune, a sceptical old man in Wonka, Austin Blaine in the 2025 comedy Fackham Hall. It is the career of an actor whose name people rarely know and whose face they always recognise.
Movies (5)
TV (5)
Where to start with Ian Bartholomew
No single title on this list carries him, so pick by mood. A Prayer for the Dying is the best film here and his Kristou is a proper character part in it, oily and useful, which makes it the sensible place to start.
For television, Frank Stubbs Promotes is the period piece worth digging up, while DCI Banks and New Tricks are comfortable British procedurals in which he does exactly what a guest actor should. Denial is the most serious film of the group, a courtroom drama about historical evidence, and he plays a television historian in it. Wonka and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre are the big-budget walk-ons, and Fackham Hall is the recent comedy. His soap role and his stage work are where the real career lives, and neither is on this page.