Occupation Actor Children Catherine Shepherd Role Actor | Name Jack Shepherd Years active 1968–present | |
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Books In Lambeth, Chasing the Moment, Impossible Plays Awards Laurence Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play Movies and TV shows Similar People Helen Masters, Catherine Shepherd, Jack Gold, Jack Sheppard, Jack Rosenthal | ||
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Jack Shepherd (born 29 October 1940) is an English actor, playwright, theatre director, saxophone player and jazz pianist, who made his film debut in 1969 with All Neat in Black Stockings and The Virgin Soldiers. He is perhaps best known for his television roles, most notably the title role in Trevor Griffiths' series about a young Labour MP "Bill Brand" and later the detective drama Wycliffe.
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Early life
Shepherd attended Roundhay School in Leeds and then studied fine art at Kings College, Newcastle. During his time in Newcastle he was an amateur actor with the People's Theatre. After gaining a BA he went on to study acting, first at the Central School of Speech and Drama and then as a student founder of the Drama Centre London.
Career
He worked at the Royal Court Theatre from 1965 to 1969, making his first appearance on the London stage as an Officer of Dragoons in Serjeant Musgrave's Dance. In July 1967 he played Arnold Middleton in David Storey's The Restoration of Arnold Middleton, which transferred to the Criterion Theatre, a performance for which he received the Plays and Players London Critics' Award as most promising actor of the year.
During the 1970s he appeared in many television dramas, including several appearances in the series Budgie (1971–72). In Ready When You Are, Mr McGill (1976) by Jack Rosenthal he played a television director struggling to maintain his composure during a doomed location shoot, and in Trevor Griffiths's Thames TV series Bill Brand (also 1976) a radical Labour MP. Both performances gained Shepherd Royal Television Society (RTS) Awards. He appeared as Renfield in Count Dracula (1977), with Louis Jourdan in the title role.
Shepherd also spent the decade running a drama studio in Kentish Town, north London along with fellow actor Richard Wilson, and during that time became interested in playwriting. He devised several plays for the theatre including The Sleep of Reason, Real Time, Clapperclaw and Half Moon.
In 1972 he was a founding member, along with Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge, of the democratically run Actors' Company, playing Vasques in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Inspector of Police in Ruling the Roost (Edinburgh Festival and tour) and Okano in The Three Arrows at the Arts, Cambridge in October 1972. In December 1972 he played Ben in David Mercer's Let's Murder Vivaldi at The King's Head Theatre, and in January 1973 took the title role in Dracula at the Bush Theatre, also collaborating in the writing.
From 1977 to 1985 he was a member of Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Theatre Company at the National Theatre, playing Teach in American Buffalo, Judas in The Passion, Boamer in Lark Rise, Thomas Clarkeson in The World Turned Upside Down, Smitty in The Long Voyage Home, The Correspondent in Dispatches and Hickey in The Iceman Cometh. Shepherd originated the stage role of Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Cottesloe in 1983, for which he received a Society of West End Theatre award (later known as the Laurence Olivier Awards) as Actor of the Year in a New Play.
His first written work for the stage was In Lambeth, an imaginary conversation about revolution between the poet and artist William Blake, his wife Catherine and Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man. He first directed it at the Partisan Theatre in July 1989 before its transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, winning the 1989 Time Out Awards for Best Directing and Best Writing.
Shepherd's work in television during the 1980s and 1990s included "Blind Justice", a miniseries by Peter Flannery, and culminated in his acclaimed role as the eponymous Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe in the HTV television series Wycliffe from 1993 to 1998. He appeared as Butler the Butler in the 1996 television miniseries Over Here.
As a theatre director he has staged several productions at the Shakespeare's Globe, including his lively 'Prologue Production' of The Two Gentlemen of Verona starring Mark Rylance as Proteus, which opened the Globe to the theatregoing public in August 1996, a year before the formal opening Gala. In 1998 at the Globe he played a sad Antonio in Richard Olivier's production of The Merchant of Venice.
Shepherd's epic drama about the Chartist movement, Holding Fire! was commissioned by the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre as part of its Renaissance and Revolution season, and was first staged there by Mark Rosenblatt in August 2007.
He played the part of the Father in Rupert Goold's production of Six Characters in Search of an Author in 2009, the Doctor in The Master Builder at the Almeida, and Melchior, one of the Magi, in the four-part TV drama The Nativity, broadcast on BBC One in December 2010. 2013 he played Harry in "Home" by David Storey at the Arcola Theatre and Joe in the BBC TV series "The Politician's Husband". In 2014 Serebryakov in "Uncle Vanya at the St James Theatre. Also in 2014 he toured in 3 Ghost Stories for Middleground Theatre Company.
His interest in community theatre led to adaptations of "Dorian Gray" and of Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree" for the Players Collective in Lewes. His version of "Under the Greenwood Tree" was performed by the Hardy Players in Dorchester in Dec 2016.
Plays
Plays include:
Co-wrote with Keith Dewhurst "Impossible Plays", an account of his years in Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Company at the National Theatre. Published by Methuen.
His two recently completed plays are "Against the Tide", about William Morris, and "The Valley of the Shadow" about the First World War.