Sir Derek George Jacobi (; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen as well as for his work at the Royal National Theatre, he has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a British Academy Television Award, two Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
Jacobi started his professional acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the founding members of the National Theatre. He has appeared in numerous Shakespearean stage productions including Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. Jacobi received the Laurence Olivier Award, for the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac in 1983 and Malvolio in Twelfth Night in 2009. He also won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in 1985.
On television, he portrayed Claudius in the BBC series I, Claudius (1976), for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. He received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for The Tenth Man (1988), and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Frasier (2001). He also took roles in BBC Two's The Pallisers (1974), the ITV drama series Cadfael (1994–1998), the HBO film The Gathering Storm (2002), the sitcom Vicious (2013–2016), in BBC's Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), and the Netflix series The Crown in 2019.
Jacobi has acted in numerous films including Othello (1965), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Hamlet (1996), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Riddle (2007), My Week with Marilyn (2011), Anonymous (2011), Cinderella (2015), and Murder on the Orient Express (2017). Jacobi portrayed Senator Gracchus in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) and Gladiator II (2024). Jacobi has also earned two Screen Actors Guild Awards along with the ensemble cast for Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010).
Derek George Jacobi was born on 22 October 1938 in Leytonstone, Essex, England (now part of East London), the only child of Alfred George Jacobi (1910–1993), who ran a tobacconists-cum-sweet shop in Chingford, and Daisy Gertrude (née Masters; 1910–1980), a secretary. His patrilineal great-grandfather had emigrated from Germany to England during the 19th century. He also has a distant Huguenot ancestor. His family was working-class, and Jacobi describes his childhood as happy. When he was nine he contracted rheumatic fever and had to spend 18 months in bed. His parents moved his bed into the living room, where he spent his time listening to the radio and watching TV. This influence gave him a new accent and a desire to be an actor.
In his teens he went to Leyton County High School for Boys, now known as the Leyton Sixth Form College, and became an integral part of the drama club, The Players of Leyton. While in the sixth form, he starred in a production of Hamlet which was taken to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and very well regarded. At 18, he won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, graduating with a degree in history from St John's College. His university contemporaries included Ian McKellen who had a crush on him—"a passion that was undeclared and unrequited", as McKellen relates it — and Trevor Nunn. During his studies at Cambridge, Jacobi played many parts including Hamlet, which was taken on a tour to Switzerland, where he met Richard Burton. As a result of his performance of Edward II at Cambridge, Jacobi was invited to become a member of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre immediately after his graduation in 1960.
1959–1979: Stage debut and breakthrough
Jacobi's talent was recognised by Laurence Olivier, who invited the young actor back to London to become one of the founding members of the new National Theatre, even though Jacobi was relatively unknown at the time. He played Laertes in the National Theatre's inaugural production of Hamlet opposite Peter O'Toole in 1963. Olivier cast him as Cassio in the successful National Theatre stage production of Othello, a role that Jacobi repeated in the 1965 film version. He played Andrei in the NT production and film of Three Sisters (1970), both featuring Olivier. On 27 July 1965, Jacobi played Brindsley Miller in the first production of Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy which was presented by the National Theatre at Chichester and subsequently in London.
After eight years at the National Theatre, Jacobi left in 1971 to pursue different roles. In 1972, he starred in the BBC series Man of Straw, an adaptation of Heinrich Mann's book Der Untertan, directed by Herbert Wise. Jacobi appeared in a somewhat tragicomic role, as Lord Fawn, in eight episodes of the 26-episode mini-series The Pallisers for BBC Two in 1974. Most of his theatrical work in the 1970s was with the touring classical Prospect Theatre Company, with which he undertook many roles, including Ivanov, Pericles, Prince of Tyre and A Month in the Country opposite Dorothy Tutin (1976).
Jacobi's big breakthrough came in 1976 when he played the title role in the BBC's series I, Claudius in which his performance as the stammering, twitching Emperor Claudius, won much praise and cemented his reputation. In 1979, thanks to his international popularity, he took Hamlet on a theatrical world tour through England, Egypt, Greece, Sweden, Australia, Japan and China, playing Prince Hamlet. He was invited to perform the role at Kronborg Castle, Denmark, known as Elsinore Castle, the setting of the play. In 1978, he appeared in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Richard II, with Sir John Gielgud and Dame Wendy Hiller.
In 1980, Jacobi took the leading role in the BBC's Hamlet, made his Broadway debut in The Suicide (a run shortened by Jacobi's return to England due to the death of his mother), and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). From 1982 to 1985, he played four demanding roles simultaneously: Benedick in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, for which he won a Tony for its Broadway run (1984–1985); Prospero in The Tempest; Peer Gynt; and Cyrano de Bergerac which he brought to the US and played in repertory with Much Ado About Nothing on Broadway and in Washington DC (1984–1985). In 1986, he made his West End debut in Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore, starring in the role of Alan Turing, which was written with Jacobi specifically in mind. The play was taken to Broadway. In 1988, Jacobi alternated in West End the title roles of Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III in repertoire.
He appeared in the television dramas Inside the Third Reich (1982), where he played Hitler; Mr Pye (1985); Little Dorrit (1987), based on Charles Dickens's novel; and The Tenth Man (1988) with Anthony Hopkins and Kristin Scott Thomas. In 1982, he voiced Nicodemus in the animated film The Secret of NIMH. In 1990, he starred as Daedalus in episode 4 of Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Greek Myths. Jacobi continued to play Shakespeare roles, notably in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film of Henry V (as the Chorus), and made his directing debut as Branagh's director for the 1988 Renaissance Theatre Company's touring production of Hamlet, which also played at Elsinore and as part of a Renaissance repertory season at the Phoenix Theatre in London. The 1990s saw Jacobi keeping on with repertoire stage work in Kean at The Old Vic, Becket in the West End (the Haymarket Theatre) and Macbeth at the RSC in both London and Stratford. In 1994 Jacobi voiced Mr Jeremy Fisher in The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
He was appointed the joint artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, with the West End impresario Duncan Weldon in 1995 for a three-year tenure. As an actor at Chichester he also starred in four plays, including his first Uncle Vanya in 1996 (he played it again in 2000, bringing the Chekhov play to Broadway for a limited run). Jacobi's work during the 1990s included the 13-episode series TV adaptation of the novels by Ellis Peters, Cadfael (1994–1998) and a televised version of Breaking the Code (1996). Film appearances of the era included performances in Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again (1991), Branagh's full-text rendition of Hamlet (1996) as King Claudius, John Maybury's Love is the Devil (1998), a portrait of painter Francis Bacon, as Senator Gracchus in Gladiator (2000) with Russell Crowe, and as "The Duke" opposite Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard in a post-apocalyptic version of Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (2002).