29 Facts About Roger Rees

Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director, widely known for his stage work.

Roger Rees won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

Roger Rees received Obie Awards for his role in The End of the Day and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher.

Roger Rees was widely known to American television audiences for playing the characters Robin Colcord in Cheers and Lord John Marbury in The West Wing.

Roger Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales, the son of Doris Louise, a shop clerk, and William John Roger Rees, a police officer.

Roger Rees studied art at the Camberwell College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art, turning to acting when he was painting backdrops at the Wimbledon Theatre and was asked to fill a part in a play.

Roger Rees played Malcolm in the acclaimed Trevor Nunn 1976 stage and 1978 television production of Macbeth.

Roger Rees created the title role in the original production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, David Edgar's stage adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, winning a Laurence Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play in 1980 and a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1982.

Roger Rees starred in the original production of The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at the Strand Theatre in London in 1982.

Roger Rees began to work in television during the 1980s, appearing opposite Laurence Olivier in The Ebony Tower.

That same year, Rees portrayed Fred Hollywell in A Christmas Carol, which he narrated, starring George C Scott as Scrooge.

Roger Rees played British Ambassador Lord John Marbury in several episodes of The West Wing from 2000 to 2005.

Roger Rees played the Sheriff of Rottingham in the Mel Brooks movie Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Roger Rees recorded many audiobooks, including Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice.

From November 2004 to October 2007, Roger Rees was artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, only the fourth person to hold the post in its half-century history.

Roger Rees replaced Nathan Lane in the role of Gomez Addams in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Addams Family, on 22 March 2011 and remained until the end of the run on 31 December 2011.

In 2012, Roger Rees took his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will, to London's West End, playing a three-week engagement at the Apollo Theatre.

In 2013, Roger Rees directed Crispin Whitell's play, The Primrose Path, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

In 2014, Roger Rees directed Dog and Pony, a musical written by Rick Elice and Michael Patrick Walker, which had its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.

Roger Rees left the production in May 2015 owing to his illness.

Roger Rees was to have directed a new musical written by Elice and Will Van Dyke, Magnificent Climb, in the fall of 2016 at MCC Theater in New York City.

Roger Rees was scheduled to perform his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will in New York in the autumn of 2015, and had hoped to return to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a stint in Don Quixote in 2016.

Roger Rees was inducted into the exclusive entertainment fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats, as a full member.

Roger Rees lived in the United States for more than 25 years and became a naturalized American citizen in 1989.

Roger Rees married his partner of 33 years, playwright Rick Elice, in 2011, shortly after same-sex marriage in New York was legalised.

Elice co-wrote the libretto for The Addams Family musical, the cast of which Roger Rees had joined on 22 March 2011.

In 2012, Elice and Roger Rees received Tony Award nominations for Elice's stage adaptation and Roger Rees' co-direction, respectively, of Peter and the Starcatcher.

Roger Rees died at age 71 at his home in New York City on 10 July 2015.

On 16 November 2015, Roger Rees was inducted, posthumously, into the Broadway Theatre Hall of Fame.