Sir Derek Jacobi is a renowned actor who has worked with Shakespeare greats and received awards for his performances. He has played many of Shakespeare’s male roles and worked with prestigious theater companies. Jacobi has also appeared in modern roles, including a comedic guest appearance on Frasier. His recent works include films and a docudrama. He has been knighted in both Denmark and England and received numerous awards for his contributions to the arts.
Sir Derek Jacobi is a celebrated stage and screen actor who has worked with some of Shakespeare’s finest actors over the past 50 years. He has worked with Shakespeare greats such as Sir John Gielgud, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Wendy Hiller and Kenneth Branagh. Outside the realm of Shakespeare’s comedies, Jacobi has made notable film, stage and television work, and is perhaps best known for his 1990s BBC character Brother Cadfael, the 11th-century monk who works as a detective .
To 1970s audiences, Jacobi was already recognizable enough. Her starring role in the BBC I production, Claudius showed the range of her talent. He received a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Actor for the role.
In the middle I, Claudio and Cadfael Jacobi boasted an impressive career. His work in Branagh’s Henry V is well known. Jacobi also starred in Branagh’s homage to Hitchcock Dead Again where he is suitably humorous and potentially evil.
It may be fair to say that Jacobi has taken a turn in many of Shakespeare’s great male roles, both on stage and screen. He has been in numerous productions of Hamlet, Richard II Richard III, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth and Othello.
Jacobi has at times been aligned with some of the best theater companies in England. He was a member of the National Theater Company from 1963 to 1972. He was also a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1982 to 1985. Jacobi worked closely with Kenneth Branagh as part of the now disbanded Renaissance Theater Company.
Though Jacobi often lands period roles, he shows himself delightfully modern in a guest appearance on the sitcom Frasier in a 2000 episode The Show Must Go Off. In the role, he plays the worst Shakespearean actor in the world, with repeated practices of the death of Hamlet, which are steadily getting worse. The role earned Jacobi an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Performance in 2001.
Jacobi’s recent works include parts in the films Nannie McPhee and Evolution: Underworld. He also recently starred in the BBC2 produced docudrama Pinochet in Suburbia, and starred in the comedy A Voyage Round my Father which aired in Covent Garden in July and August 2006. Jacobi has finished production on a film entitled The Riddle playing Charles Dickens in a fictional mystery concerning his latest unfinished novel. Riddle is scheduled for release in 2007.
Jacobi, along with Sir Laurence Olivier, is one of the few actors to have knighthood in both Denmark and England. Since both played the legendary Hamlet, to high praise, the Danish hallmark is well understood. Jacobi’s contributions to British theatre, film and television are significant and Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1994. As well as winning several Emmys and a BAFTA, Jacobi has also received the Sir John Gielgud Award for Excellence in Dramatic Arts by the US National Press in 1997.
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