Sam West is an actor, theatre director and voice actor. West’s acting credits are many and varied, covering film, TV, stage and radio.
At age 19, he played the 15-year-old schoolboy Taplow in a 1985 production of The Browning Version at Birmingham Rep. After completing his studies in English literature at Oxford, West landed the role of a 17-year-old German aristocrat in the 1989 feature film Reunion, directed by Jerry Schatzberg, written by Harold Pinter and starring Jason Robards, which was entered for that year’s Cannes Film Festival. West made his London stage debut in February 1989 at the Orange Tree Theatre, playing Michael in Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles.
West’s standout roles include Leonard Bast in the 1992-film Howard’s End, which, garnered him a BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor, Valentine in the first ever production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at the National Theatre, two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company playing the title roles in Richard II and Hamlet, Robert in Betrayal at the Donmar Warehouse and an acclaimed turn as Jeffrey Skilling in Lucy Prebble’s hugely successful play Enron in 2009. His directing credits include a 2007 revival of Dealer’s Choice at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Harley Granville Barker’s Waste at the Almeida the following year, and April De Angelis’ After Electra in 2015.
From 2005-7 West took a break from acting to become artistic director of Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, where he remained for two seasons, leaving when the theatre was closed for a major refurbishment.
He is currently playing Siegfried Farnon in a remake of All Creatures Great and Small, based on the books by James Herriott, and serves as Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, which lobbies for more public investment in the arts and the promotion of arts subjects in the national curriculum.