1. Robert Guy Bathurst was born on 22 February 1957 and is a British actor.
57 Facts About Robert Bathurst
1. 2.
In 1959, his family moved to Ballybrack, Dublin, Ireland, and Robert Bathurst attended school in Killiney and later was enrolled at Headfort, an Irish boarding school.
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In 1966, the family moved back to England and Robert Bathurst transferred to Worth School in Sussex, where he took up amateur dramatics.
4.
Robert Bathurst 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.
5.
Robert Bathurst made a return to theatre roles, playing Vershinin in The Three Sisters, Adrien in the two-hander Members Only, government whip Alistair in Whipping it Up, and the title role in Alex.
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Robert Bathurst appeared in his first Noel Coward play, Present Laughter, in 2010 and followed it with a role in Blithe Spirit that same year and again in 2011.
7.
Robert Guy Bathurst was born in Accra, Gold Coast, on 22 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.
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Robert Bathurst's father was a major in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War and was working in West Africa as a management consultant.
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Robert Bathurst 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".
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In 1966, the family moved to England and Robert Bathurst was sent to board at Worth School in Sussex.
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Robert Bathurst had first become interested in acting when his family saw a pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin and he watched actors waiting for their cues in the wings.
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Aged 18, Robert Bathurst left school to read law at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
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Robert Bathurst spent much of his time there performing in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Hugh Laurie, Rory McGrath and Emma Thompson.
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Robert Bathurst 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.
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Robert Bathurst had already appeared in a training video by director Geoff Posner and got the role of Henry by way of thanks.
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Robert Bathurst replaced Roger Lloyd-Pack as Tim Allgood and stayed at the Savoy for a year.
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Robert Bathurst believes that his "ludicrous audition" was only "an arm-twisting exercise" because the producers wanted to pressure Timothy Dalton to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning other actors.
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Robert Bathurst 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.
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The part eventually went to Craig Charles but Robert 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.
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Ten years later, Robert 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.
21.
Robert Bathurst got the part and the pilot of Joking Apart was broadcast as an installment of the BBC Two Comic Asides strand.
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Robert Bathurst appeared as sitcom writer Mark Taylor in the series.
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Robert Bathurst has said that he believes Mark was too "designery" and wishes that he had "roughened him up a bit".
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Robert Bathurst is often recognised for his appearance in this series, mentioning that "Drunks stop me on public transport and tell me details of the plot of their favourite episode".
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Between 1991 and 1995, Robert Bathurst appeared on television in No Job for a Lady, The House of Eliott and The Detectives and on stage in The Choice, George Bernard Shaw's Getting Married at Chichester with Dorothy Tutin and Gogol's The Nose adapted by Alastair Beaton, which played in Nottingham and Bucharest.
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Robert Bathurst filmed a role in The Wind in the Willows as St John Weasel.
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In 1996, while appearing in The Rover at the Salisbury Playhouse, Robert Bathurst got an audition for the Granada Television comedy pilot Cold Feet.
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Robert Bathurst arrived for the audition "bearded and shaggy", on account of his role in the play, and did not expect to win the role of upper-middle class management consultant David Marsden.
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Robert Bathurst identified the character as merely a "post-Thatcherite whipping boy".
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Robert Bathurst reprised the role in the Cold Feet series, which ran for five years from 1998 to 2003.
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Robert Bathurst described the character of David as an "emotional cripple", originally with little depth.
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Robert 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".
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Robert Bathurst "wobbled, missed the camera and crashed into the pavement", leading director Simon Delaney to exclaim it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
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Robert Bathurst turned them down, preferring to play a "good person", which would be more interesting from a dramatic point of view.
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In 2001, Robert Bathurst appeared in the music video for Westlife's Comic Relief single "Uptown Girl".
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In 2002, straight after finishing Cold Feet, Robert Bathurst went straight into filming My Dad's the Prime Minister, a series in which he portrays fictional British prime minister Michael Philips.
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Robert Bathurst watched debates in the House of Commons to prepare for the role but did not base his portrayal on Tony Blair.
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Robert Bathurst had not seen The Three Sisters before starring in it.
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Robert 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.
40.
Robert Bathurst starred as Adrien opposite Nicholas Tennant in the UK premiere of Members Only at the Trafalgar Studios.
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Robert Bathurst accepted the part because it was "funny, plausible, plausibly absurd and cruel" and he liked that it was a translation from an original French play.
42.
In 2006, Robert Bathurst appeared in an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot 2005 where he played Gilbert Entwhistle in After the Funeral.
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The play ran at the Arts Theatre between October and November 2007 and featured Robert Bathurst interacting with other characters projected onto a screen behind him.
44.
Robert Bathurst was attracted to the role because of the "duplicity and guile" Alex uses to get himself out of tight situations.
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Robert Bathurst reprised the role in an international tour from September to November 2008, playing in Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.
46.
Robert Bathurst reprised the role for two more series in 2008 and 2009.
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Robert Bathurst played the role of Mr Weston in the BBC costume drama Emma, which was broadcast in October 2009 on BBC One.
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Robert Bathurst previously played Weston in a two-part adaptation of Emma for BBC Radio 4 in 2000.
49.
Between January and April 2010, Robert Bathurst starred as Garry Essendine in a national touring revival of Noel Coward's Present Laughter.
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Robert Bathurst 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.
51.
Present Laughter was the first time Robert Bathurst had appeared in a Coward play and he was cast in another, Blithe Spirit, later in the year, as Charles Condomine.
52.
On television in 2010, Robert 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.
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Robert Bathurst has a recurring role in the comedy series Toast of London.
54.
In September 2016, Robert Bathurst reprised his role of David Marsden in Cold Feet.
55.
In 2019 Robert Bathurst portrayed Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army: The Lost Episodes, a recreation of three missing episodes of the BBC comedy Dad's Army.
56.
Robert Bathurst portrayed Jeffrey Bernard in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, Soho.
57.
Robert Bathurst met artist Victoria Threlfall through mutual friends and they married in 1985.