Timothy Leonard Spall OBE (born 27 February 1957 in Battersea, London) is an English actor.
He first came to prominence playing boring electrician Barry in the successful 1980s comedy-drama series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and champion spin-bowler Kevin in Outside Edge. He has since appeared in numerous films, and is perhaps best known for playing what most consider repulsive characters, or otherwise, a Gonk. These include Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter films, Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mr. Poe in A Series of Unfortunate Events and Nathaniel from Disney's Enchanted. In Shooting The Past, he played Oswald Bates, a bizarre genius who is more like Bunny-Ears Lawyer. He played Winston Churchill in The King's Speech, and Simon Graham in The Last Samurai. In the film adaptation of Journey's End, he played Lt. Trotter.
He won Best Actor at Cannes for his portrayal of JMW Turner in the biopic Mr. Turner.
As for his personal life, Spall has been married since 1981 and has three children, the youngest of whom, Rafe, is also an actor; they appeared together as father and son in the 2007 television adaptation of A Room with a View.
Timothy Spall on TV Tropes:
- Quadrophenia (1979)
- The Bride (1985)
- White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
- Secrets & Lies (1996)
- Topsy-Turvy (1999)
- Chicken Run (2000)
- Vanilla Sky (2001)
- Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (full appearance in Part 1, archive footage in Part 2) (2010 and 2011 respectively)
- The Last Samurai (2003)
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
- Enchanted (2007)
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
- Oliver Twist (2007)
- The Street (BBC) (2007-09)
- The King's Speech (2012)
- Mr. Turner (2014)
- Denial (2016)
- Early Man (2018)
- The Last Bus (2021)
- Spencer (2021)
- The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Tropes & Trivia in his works:
- Jerkass: Not in real life but he plays a lot of characters like this and is really good at it too.
- Method Acting: He studied painting for two full years before shooting even began on Mr. Turner so that he could knowledgeably portray one of Britain's greatest painters actually practicing his craft on screen. He developed his skills to a point where he could copy JMW Turner's paintings and have his version be all but indistinguishable from the original.
