Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish actor and director of stage and screen.
24 Facts About Ian McDiarmid
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Ian McDiarmid has received an Olivier Award for Best Actor for Insignificance and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Faith Healer.
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Ian McDiarmid was born in Carnoustie, Angus, Scotland, on 11 August 1944.
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Ian McDiarmid became a theatre aficionado when he was five years old, when his father took him to see an act named Tommy Morgan at a theatre in Dundee.
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However, fearing his father's disapproval, Ian McDiarmid attended Queen's College, Dundee, where he received a Master of Arts in psychology.
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In 1968, Ian McDiarmid received a gold medal for his work from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the first of many recognitions given to him for his work in the theatre.
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Ian McDiarmid has worked as an actor and director in British theatre.
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Ian McDiarmid has starred in several Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Trevor Nunn's 1976 Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and King Lear.
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Ian McDiarmid played Ivanov in Tom Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the Mermaid Theatre in 1978.
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In 2002, McDiarmid won Almeida Theatre's Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor for his role as Teddy in a revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer.
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Ian McDiarmid portrayed Harry Hackamore in Sam Shepard's play Seduced.
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Ian McDiarmid was only 37 at the time, and this convinced George Lucas and Richard Marquand that he could convincingly play a much older character in extreme cinematic close-up, which helped him land the role of Palpatine.
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Ian McDiarmid returned to the role of Palpatine on screen for the first time since Revenge of the Sith in the 2019 film The Rise of Skywalker, the third film in the sequel trilogy, and the ninth and final episode in the Skywalker saga.
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Ian McDiarmid has worked with the Star Wars expanded universe as the voice of Darth Sidious in the video game adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi: Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
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From 23 to 26 August 2012, he attended Celebration VI in Orlando, Florida, and had his own show titled The Phantom Menace: Ian McDiarmid, hosted by James Arnold Taylor, in which he talked about his experience working on Star Wars and how he landed the role of Sidious.
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Ian McDiarmid voiced a pig version of Sidious for a promo video on Angry Birds Star Wars II, entitled "Join the Pork Side".
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Ian McDiarmid appeared as Darth Sidious in the 2022 TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi, in both new scenes and archive material from the prequel trilogy.
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Ian McDiarmid took an early role as Mickey Hamilton, a killer intent on avenging the death of his wife and child in The Professionals for London Weekend Television.
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Ian McDiarmid played the role of police detective Porfiry Petrovich in the BBC's 2002 adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
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In 2003, Ian McDiarmid took the role of the Stuart statesman Edward Hyde, in the BBC series Charles II: The Power and The Passion.
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Ian McDiarmid played intelligence chief LeClerc in a 2009 BBC Radio dramatization of John le Carre's The Looking Glass War.
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Ian McDiarmid had a recurring role on series 2 of Utopia, playing the role of Anton.
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In September 2016, Ian McDiarmid starred in the audio podcast drama series Akiha Den Den.
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Ian McDiarmid played Cuttings, a ham radio buff who picks up a mysterious voice coming from an abandoned amusement park and Prospero in a BBC Radio 3 "new, environmentally-inflected production of The Tempest to coincide with COP26 in Glasgow", 7 Nov 2021.