Steven Blakeley

Early life

Steven Blakeley was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire in 1982 and was brought up in the Derbyshire mining town of Bolsover. He attended local schools and was initially interested in pursuing a medical career, before turning his attentions to performing.

Career

Blakeley started his career as a member of the Derby Playhouse Community and Youth Theatre companies, before going on to work professionally at Derby Playhouse. He trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow and at the Athanor Theater Akademie in Germany and has also studied with the Open University. His theatre credits include national tours of Peter Shaffer's The Private Ear and The Public Eye, Dry Rot and Funny Peculiar, Diary of a Nobody at the Royal and Derngate, Boeing Boeing, Selling the Sizzle, Bare Words, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter Pan, The Hypochondriac, Soap and Cold Turkey.

As well as appearing in four series of ITV1's Heartbeat, he has made guest appearances in ITV's Emmerdale, and BBC's Doctors and Holby City. Blakeley has performed in radio plays for the BBC and provided narration on animation films and poetry recordings. In 2006, he was a nominee in the category of Best Newcomer at the National Television Awards. Blakeley played Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Verges in Much Ado About Nothing with the British Shakespeare Company on their 2009 tour of the United Kingdom, Dublin, Norway and Prague.

Blakeley also works as a writer and theatre director.

Since 2009, he has appeared in pantomime at the Theatre Royal Windsor, playing pantomime dame in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and Jack and the Beanstalk, which he also wrote and directed. In 2010, he was acting at Derby Theatre.