Robert Bathurst

Robert Guy Bathurst (born February 1957) is a British actor.

Bathurst was born in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in February 1957, where his father was working as a management consultant. In 1959, his family moved to Ballybrack, Dublin, Ireland, and Bathurst attended school in Killiney and later was enrolled at Headfort, an Irish boarding school. In 1966, the family moved back to England and Bathurst transferred to Worth School in Sussex, where he took up amateur dramatics. At the age of 18, he went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge to read law. At Cambridge he joined the Footlights group.

After graduating, he took up acting full-time and made his professional stage debut in 1983, playing Tim Allgood in Michael Frayn's Noises Off, which ran for a year at the Savoy Theatre. To broaden his knowledge of working on stage, he joined the National Theatre. He supplemented his stage roles in the 1980s with television roles, appearing in comedies such as the aborted pilot episode of Blackadder, Chelmsford 123, The Lenny Henry Show and the first episode of Red Dwarf. In 1991, he won his first major television role playing Mark Taylor in the semi-autobiographical BBC sitcom Joking Apart, written by Steven Moffat. Although only thirteen episodes were made (between 1991 and 1995), the role remains Bathurst's favourite of his whole career. After Joking Apart concluded, he was cast as pompous management consultant David Marsden in the ITV comedy drama Cold Feet, which ran for five series from 1998 to 2003 and again for four further series from 2016 to 2020.

Since 2003, Bathurst has played a fictional prime minister in the BBC sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister; Mark Thatcher in the fact-based drama Coup!; and a man whose daughter goes missing in the ITV thriller The Stepfather. He made a return to theatre roles, playing Vershinin in The Three Sisters (2003), Adrien in the two-hander Members Only (2006), government whip Alistair in Whipping it Up (2006–07), and the title role in Alex (2007, 2008). In the following years he starred in the television dramas The Pillars of the Earth (2010), Downton Abbey (2010) and Hattie (2011) and joined the cast of Wild at Heart in 2012. He appeared in his first Noël Coward play, Present Laughter, in 2010 and followed it with a role in Blithe Spirit that same year and again in 2011. He is married and has four children.

Early life Robert Guy Bathurst was born in Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), in February 1957 to Philip Charles Metcalfe Bathurst, a descendant of politician Charles Bathurst and kinsman of the Earls Bathurst and Viscounts Bledisloe, and his wife Gillian ( Debenham). His father was a major in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War and was working in West Africa as a management consultant. His mother was a physiotherapist. They had two other children, Nicholas and Charlotte. The family lived in Ghana until 1959, when they moved to Ballybrack, Dublin, Ireland. Bathurst and his brother attended two schools in Dublin – the Holy Child School in Killiney and a school in Ballsbridge – before being sent to Headfort, a preparatory school in Kells, County Meath. He compared the time he and his brother, who were Catholics, spent at the Anglican boarding school to Lord of the Flies; "we were incarcerated in a huge, stinking, Georgian house, where we were treated very brutally".

Aged 18, Bathurst left school to read law at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He spent much of his time there performing in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Hugh Laurie, Rory McGrath and Emma Thompson. He also directed and appeared in the Footlights pantomime Aladdin as Widow Twankey during the 1978–79 season. He took the Bar Vocational Course at the University of Law, in London, which allowed him to go on to become a practising barrister, but stuck to acting instead. Although he enjoyed his work with Footlights, he did not continue performing with the group, worrying that he would be "washed up at 35 having coat-tailed on their success through the early part of [his] career". His first role for television came in 1982, when he appeared as Prince Henry in the pilot episode of Blackadder. He had already appeared in a training video by director Geoff Posner and got the role of Henry by way of thanks. The character was recast and downgraded when the series was commissioned as The Black Adder. He regards it as "the most demoralising" job he has ever had but was grateful for the theatre experience it gave him. The following year, he appeared at The Man in the Moon, a pub theatre in Chelsea, in Judgement, a two-hour monologue on cannibalism. The opening night audience was made up of three people but after good reviews in the national press the audience grew to an average of fifteen.

He continued to make minor appearances in television throughout the 1980s; in 1987, he auditioned for the role of Dave Lister in the BBC North science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. The part eventually went to Craig Charles but Bathurst was given a role in the first episode of the first series as Frank Todhunter, second officer on the ship, who is killed in the first ten minutes. Ten years later, Bathurst was invited to reprise the role when a storyline in the series allowed former characters to return, but filming commitments prevented him from appearing. In 1989, he appeared in Malcolm Bradbury's Anything More Would Be Greedy for Anglia Television, playing Dennis Medlam, MP. The programme was broadcast in 1990 to little fanfare. He has also said that he believes Mark was too "designery" and wishes that he had "roughened him up a bit". The role is his favourite of his whole career; he has described it as "the most enjoyable job I will ever do" and considers several episodes of the series to be "timeless, beautifully constructed farces which will endure". As punishment for arriving late for the series one press launch at the Café Royal in Regent Street, London, writer Steven Moffat pledged to write an episode in which Mark is naked throughout. To a large extent, this vow is realised in the second series. The role in the pilot was only minor and created at the last minute to support characters played by James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale; the only character note in the script about David related to his high salary. Bathurst identified the character as merely a "post-Thatcherite whipping boy". The third series features an affair between David and a political activist played by Yasmin Bannerman. Bathurst appreciated the opportunity to bring some depth to a previously one-dimensional character, but was more impressed with the storylines that came out of the affair, rather than the affair itself: "It was the deception, the guilt and the recrimination rather than the actual affair, which was neither interesting nor remarkable". In 2001, Bathurst appeared in the music video for Westlife's Comic Relief single "Uptown Girl". In 2003, he returned to theatre for the first time in four years to play Vershinin in The Three Sisters, opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Eric Sykes. He had not seen The Three Sisters before starring in it. Director Michael Blakemore advised him to turn this to his advantage, as he would not feel he had to live up to previous portrayals. After its run concluded, a special edition of The Three Sisters was filmed with the same cast for television broadcast on BBC Four. In 2005, the second series of My Dad's the Prime Minister was broadcast, now moved to a Friday night time slot to take advantage of the adult humour. The same year, he starred in the ITV thriller The Stepfather playing Christopher Veazey, a man whose daughter goes missing. Bathurst was pleased that this white-collar worker had an emotional side, in comparison to David Marsden, whom he used as a yardstick when accepting those sorts of roles. Also in 2005, he played Mr Sesseman in an adaptation of Heidi and Dottore Massimo in The Thief Lord. At the end of the year, he appeared opposite Richard Wilson in Whipping it Up, a play about whips in a fictional David Cameron government. To research his role, he watched more Commons debates. The tour coincided with his appearance as the titular character in Alex, based on the comic in The Daily Telegraph. The play ran at the Arts Theatre between October and November 2007 and featured Bathurst interacting with other characters projected onto a screen behind him. He was attracted to the role because of the "duplicity and guile" Alex uses to get himself out of tight situations. The role won him a nomination for Best Solo Performance at the What's on Stage Awards. He reprised the role in an international tour from September to November 2008, playing in Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. As Alex he presented a ten-part series on Classic FM, which won a Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2012. He now performs Alex as a corporate after-dinner entertainment. 2007 also saw Bathurst perform as linguist Charles in the first series of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Hut 33. He reprised the role for two more series in 2008 and 2009.

In 2009, he made his third and final appearance as art dealer James Garrett in My Family. He also played the role of Mr Weston in the BBC costume drama Emma, which was broadcast in October 2009 on BBC One. He previously played Weston in a two-part adaptation of Emma for BBC Radio 4 in 2000. Between January and April 2010, Bathurst starred as Garry Essendine in a national touring revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter. He had not seen Present Laughter before, though had seen several Coward plays in his 20s and did not imitate Coward's speech patterns while performing. Present Laughter was the first time Bathurst had appeared in a Coward play and he was cast in another, Blithe Spirit, later in the year, as Charles Condomine. The play toured theatres around southern England in 2010 and early 2011 before beginning a three-month run at the Apollo Theatre in London.

On television in 2010, Bathurst starred as Percy Hamleigh in the German-Canadian miniseries The Pillars of the Earth and had a recurring role as widower Sir Anthony Strallan in the period drama Downton Abbey. In 2011 he starred as John Le Mesurier in the Hattie Jacques biopic Hattie, and joined the cast of the long-running ITV drama Wild at Heart.

He also has a recurring role in the comedy series Toast of London.

In 2014 he appeared in the Midsomer Murders “The Flying Club” as Perry Darnley. Bathurst is to star as Andy in the upcoming Sky1 television film television film adaptation of the M. C. Beaton novel Agatha Raisin: The Quiche of Death as Andy Cummings-Browne (2014).

In September 2016, Bathurst reprised his role of David Marsden in Cold Feet.

In 2019 Bathurst portrayed Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army: The Lost Episodes, a recreation of three missing episodes of the BBC comedy Dad's Army. He also portrayed Jeffrey Bernard in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, Soho. Bathurst said he jumped at the opportunity: "It’s so obviously a good idea, and appealingly odd. It brings Jeffrey Bernard’s journalism on to the stage, his own version of himself, not necessarily how others saw him." He added: "It’s a brilliantly funny, sour and surprisingly moving manifesto for the right of people to destroy their liver and wallet in any way they choose."

Personal life Bathurst met artist Victoria Threlfall through mutual friends and they married in 1985. They have four daughters: Matilda, Clemency, Oriel and Honor. The Golden Age (2012) - 3 episodes. Written by Arthur Mathews

Written works Bathurst, Robert (4 December 2001). "Yes, Cold Feet beat Trollope, but at what cost?". The Daily Telegraph: p. 17. Bathurst, Robert (25 October 2008). "Alex tour: Getting Brezhnev to smile would have been easier". The Daily Telegraph: p. 26 (Review section) Bathurst, Robert (7 March 2009). "It's their loss (but our pain)". The Independent