David Oakes

David Oakes
Born	Rowan David Oakes 14 October 1983 Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England
Alma mater	• Bristol Old Vic Theatre School  • University of Manchester
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2008–present
Website	davidoakes.co.uk

David Oakes (born 14 October 1983) is an English film, television and theatre actor.

Early life and education

He was born in Fordingbridge,^[1] Hampshire, England, the son of a Church of England canon^[2] and a professional musician.

Oakes was head boy at Bishop Wordsworth's School, in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he was also heavily involved with the Salisbury Playhouse and their youth theatre, Stage 65. He graduated with a first in English Literature from the University of Manchester.^[2]

He attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 2005 to 2007.^[3]

Career

He played the villainous William Hamleigh in the television miniseries The Pillars of the Earth (2010), produced by Ridley Scott's production company.^[4] Subsequently, Oakes was cast in the television miniseries The Borgias (2011), airing on Showtime.^[5] He played Juan Borgia opposite Jeremy Irons.

Continuing a career on television playing morally dubious characters, Oakes had a role in The White Queen for BBC One and Starz playing George, Duke of Clarence. It was broadcast in mid-2013.

Television

Year	Title	Role	Director	Channel	Notes
2008	Bonekickers	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	Iain B. MacDonald	BBC One	Episode 6 "Follow the Gleam"
	Walter's War	Oswald Hennessey	Alrick Riley	BBC Four
2009	Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant	George Cavendish		Channel 4	Episode 3 "Lover"
	Trinity	Ross Bonham	Colin Teague	ITV2	Episodes 1, 2, 3
2010	The Pillars of the Earth	Lord William Hamleigh	Sergio Mimica-Gezzan	Starz Channel 4	TV miniseries; Appeared in all eight episodes
2011–2012	The Borgias	Juan Borgia	Neil Jordan, John Maybury, David Leland, John Amiel, Kari Skogland, Jeremy Podeswa et al.	Showtime Sky Atlantic	Season 1 & 2
2012	World Without End	Bishop Henri	Michael Caton-Jones	Channel 4
2013	Ripper Street	Victor Silver	Andy Wilson	BBC BBC America	Episode 8 What Use Our Work?
	The White Queen	George, Duke of Clarence	James Kent, Jamie Payne and Colin Teague	BBC Starz
2014	Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal	Kim Philby		BBC2	Two part drama documentary by Ben MacIntyre
2015	Endeavour	Jocelyn "Joss" Bixby	Sandra Goldbacher	ITV & Mammoth Productions
	The Living and the Dead	William Payne	Sam Donovan	BBC
2016	Victoria	Prince Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha	Tom Vaughan, Sandra Goldbacher & Oliver Blackburn	ITV & Mammoth Productions

Film

Year	Title	Role	Producer	Notes
2012	Truth or Die	Justin	Corona Pictures	UK release on 6 August 2012; Called "Truth or Dare" in the UK
	100Dniowk@	David Potter	Agresywna Banda	Polish Feature Film
2013	Love By Design	Adrian	Solar Junction	Rom Com with Jane Seymour and Olivia Hallinan
	Goblin?	Harry	Multi Story Film	Short film with The Borgias co-star Holliday Grainger
	Who Shall I Play With Now?	Gregory	Dog Ate Cake	UK premiere on 29 June 2013 at the Wimbledon Shorts Festival
2014	Sins of a Father	Martin	Andrew Piddington	A re-shot, re-edited version of the 1991 film Shuttlecock with Alan Bates and Lambert Wilson
2016	Cold Skin	Friend	Xavier Gens	An adaptation of the novel co-starring Ray Stevenson

Radio

• Oakes has performed with The Fitzrovia Radio Hour
• 2008: A Dance to the Music of Time as Charles Stringham (BBC Radio 4)

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Theatre	Director
2006	Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare	Claudio & Verges	Royal Shakespeare Company & Bristol Old Vic Theatre School	John Hartoch
2007	Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare	Dumaine	Shakespeare's Globe & International Tour	Dominic Dromgoole
	We the People (World Premiere) by Eric Schlosser	Charles Pinckney & Gunning Bedford Jnr	Shakespeare's Globe	Charlotte Westenra
2008	Old Vic New Voices: The Twenty-four Hour Plays	Davide	Old Vic Theatre
	Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff	Raleigh	Mercury Theatre, Colchester	Tony Casement
	Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller	Mortimer	Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh	Aida Karic
2009	All The Little Things We Crushed (World Premiere) by Joel Horwood	Hugh	Almeida Theatre, London	Simon Godwin
2011	Three Farces ("Slasher and Crasher", "A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion" & "Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw") by John Maddison Morton	Samson Slasher & John Bagshaw	Orange Tree Theatre, London	Henry Bell
2013	Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen adapted by Simon Reade	Darcy	Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London	Deborah Bruce
2014-2015	Shakespeare in Love (World Premiere) by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard adapted by Lee Hall	Christopher Marlowe	Noël Coward Theatre, West End, London	Declan Donnellan
2015	The Trial of Macbeth by Jonathan Myerson	Banquo	Noël Coward Theatre	Christopher Haydon

• In 2006, David performed a 90-minute abridged version of Much Ado About Nothing as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Complete Works" festival along with his final year graduates from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.^[6]
• Since appearing at Shakespeare's Globe at the outset of his career, David has frequently performed in numerous rehearsed readings as part of their "Read Not Dead" initiative. Including their landmark 200th reading of Philip Massinger's A New Way To Pay Old Debts; David played Wellborn alongside a cast including Benjamin Whitrow, Alan Cox and Nicholas Rowe.^[7]
• Other performances between 2008 and 2013 for "Read Not Dead" include: An early quarto edition of Henry IV: Part One as Prince Hal oppopsite Benjamin Whitrow's Falstaff, Calderon's Life is a Dream (La Vida Es Sueno) as Segismundo, Taming Of A Shrew as Aurelias, The Spanish Tragedy as Lorenzo, The Return from Parnassus as Ingenioso, Bassianus as Geta, Gorboduc as a "smooth, almost oily^[8]" Arostus, John Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis as Montanus and Thomas Middleton's Your Five Gallants as Tailby.^[9]
• Oakes set up a theatre company called Dog Ate Cake with a long term theatrical collaborator, Henry Bell^[10]
• David was nominated for both WhatsOnStage and Broadway World awards for his performance in Shakespeare in Love in 2015. The production was also nominated for an Olivier Award.
• In 2015 David starred as Banquo in a charity fundraiser for the Shakespeare Schools Festival.^[11] The event was largely improvised by the actors and lawyers involved, but based on a framework written by Jonathan Myerson. The cast also included Christopher Ecclestone as Macbeth, Haydn Gwynne as Lady Macbeth, Patterson Joseph as MacDuff and Pippa Bennett-Warner as one of the Weird Sisters. The event interrupted the events of Shakespeare's play following the death of Duncan and placed Macbeth on trial for Murder with David, Patterson and Haydn appearing as witnesses for the prosecution and Christopher and Pippa as witnesses for the defence. The event was overseen by High Court Judge, Sir Michael Burton, the QC's were John Kelsey-Fry, Jonathan Laidlaw, Dinah Rose and Ian Winter, and the foreman of the Jury was Jeremy Paxman.^[12]

Theatre Direction

Oakes has directed a number of theatre pieces alongside his acting career. In 2003 he took a stage adaptation of The Wicker Man to the Epping Forest Theatre Festival. Rehearsing in and around his home town of Salisbury, Oakes "got kicked out of the [Cathedral] Close for rehearsing pagan rituals for [his] open-air production of The Wicker Man.”^[13]

At University he directed numerous plays including Martin McDonagh's Beauty Queen of Leenane, Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and Anthony Minghella's Whale Music^[14]

Also whilst at University, in 2005 Oakes assisted director Natalie Wilson on a production of "Smilin' Through" which was co-produced by the Truant Company, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Contact Theatre, Manchester Later that year, Oakes once again turning to literary adaptation, took a production of Stephen King's The Boogeyman to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.^[14]

With his and Bell's theatre company, Dog Ate Cake, in 2009 Oakes directed a small tour revival of John Maddison Morton's Box and Cox^[15]

Oakes frequently directs at Shakespeare's Globe extending their Read Not Dead Series, a study devoted to performing fully staged readings of the entirety of the Early Modern Canon of Drama: Most recently Oakes directed Robert Greene's The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay^[16] and Lewis Theobald's "Happy Ending" version of John Webster's Duchess of Malfi, "The Fatal Secret".^[17]

David recently directed an extract of Robert Daborne's A Christian Turn'd Turk as part of a special Read Not Dead event at Shakespeare's Globe. Four directors with four scholars were teamed up with actors and presented their arguments and selected scenes at a special hustings event on Thursday 29 May 2014

Personal life

Oakes plays both the clarinet and bass clarinet, and is a strong bass singer.^[10]

He is an avid follower of folk music, and continues to support the Bristol folk group Sheelanagig.^[1]

He has an extensive collection of canoes and is currently developing a comedy pilot based on this interest. His preferred canoe method is kayak but he also enjoys Canadian canoeing.

Art

Oakes is an avid fine line sketcher. He is increasingly known for sketching on-set animals upon coloured pages of script reissues and giving them to production members.^[18] In May 2015 he exhibited as part of the Dulwich Artists Open House Festival^[19] alongside artist and designer Sarah Hamilton.

See also

• List of British actors and actresses

References

1. "Interview for Emma Hartley entitled "Desert Island Folk Discs"". Retrieved 2 Dec 2012.
2. "Interview for 1883 Magazine from 2011". Retrieved 2 Dec 2012.
3. "List of graduates from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School since 1984". Retrieved 5 June 2010.
4. Press release (n.d.). "Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell, Matthew Macfadyen, Sarah Parish, Hayley Atwell, Eddie Redmayne and Gordon Pinsent Headline Star-Studded Cast for Screen Adaptation of Ken Follett's Bestselling Masterpiece The Pillars of the Earth". Tandem Communications. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
5. Vlessing, Etan (10 June 2010). "David Oakes, Holliday Grainger join 'Borgias'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 3 July 2010.
6. "UK Theatre Database: RSC's Much Ado About Nothing". Retrieved 24 Mar 2013.
7. "The 200th Read Not Dead". Retrieved 24 Mar 2013.
8. "The Marlowe Society Research Journal - Volume 05 - 2008" (PDF). Retrieved 24 Mar 2013.
9. "David Oakes' Spotlight CV". Retrieved 24 Mar 2013.
10. "Interview for Fault Magazine 2011". Retrieved 2 Dec 2012.
11. "The Trial of Macbeth: Photos". Retrieved 21 Feb 2016.
12. "Guardian - Trial of Macbeth". Retrieved 21 Feb 2016.
13. "Interview for Wiltshire Life 2010" (PDF). Retrieved 11 June 2013.
14. "Theatre Credits Prior To Drama School". Retrieved 11 June 2013.
15. "Dog Ate Cake". Retrieved 11 June 2013.
16. "Bacon and Bungay Review". Retrieved 11 June 2013.
17. "Globe Read Not Dead 2014". Retrieved 19 January 2014.
18. "David Oakes Prints". Retrieved 5 June 2015.
19. "Dulwich Open House". Retrieved 3 October 2015.

External links

• davidoakes.co.uk, Oakes's official website
• David Oakes at the Internet Movie Database
• Dog Ate Cake Official Website
• David Oakes Prints
• David Oakes at the London Theatre Database