Derek Jacobi

Derek Edgar Jacobi was born on October 22, 1938 in Leytonstone, London, England. He was the only child of a store manager and a secretary, both of German descent.

At a very early age his inclination for acting came to light, since at the age of six he played the double role of “Prince and Pauper” in the theater group of the local library. At Leyton County High School he would also join the drama club, known as “The Players of Leyton”. Before graduating from high school, he had already composed Hamlet at the English National Youth Theatre, it was clear that there was a born actor there. So when he won a scholarship to study history at Cambridge University, he remained focused on performing, to the point that his composition for Edward II was reciprocated with an invitation from the Birmingham Repertory to join their ranks, once graduate.

The role of Henry VIII impressed one of the giants of the British stage and screen, the great Laurence Olivier , who decided to sponsor the young actor’s career. An idea of ​​the confidence that Olivier had in him is given by the fact that he proposed to be one of the eight founding members of the National Theater Company created by him. It was precisely Olivier’s support that allowed Jacobi to make his film debut. It would be in Othello (1965) , where the two worked together, Olivier as the Moor of Venice, and Jacobi as Casio. Five years later Olivier himself directs him in Three Sisters . And almost immediately after, he will shoot two films that adapt two works by Frederick Forsyth : Jackal (1973) and Odessa(1974).

In any case, and although he will not stop making forays into films, Jacobi will be known above all as an actor on stage and on the small screen. Shakespeare becomes his great specialty, in all media. And he becomes an immensely popular face thanks to Yo, Claudio (1976), one of the best television series of all time. Based on the play by Robert Graves , Jacobi’s composition of the stuttering Roman emperor became an instant classic on the small screen.

In 1980, while acting on Broadway, Jacobi was the victim of the most terrible thing that can happen to an actor on stage: stage fright. Despite his seniority, he was seized, and for two years he could not perform live again. Fortunately he was able to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982, where he demonstrated that he was still the owner of his talent. Awards such as the Tony, the Olivier and the Helen Hayes were proof of this, his or Cyrano de Bergerac’s Shakesperean compositions were highly celebrated. On television he would play Adolf Hitler in Inside the Third Reich (1982) and was in the Dickensian Little Dorritt (1988). And you can see that Graham Greene liked him, because he was in The Human Factor(1979) by Otto Preminger , and on television The Tenth Man (1988).

If the saying “history always repeats itself”, Jacobi can be an example of this, because if he was sponsored by Laurence Olivier, he supported the Shakespearean approaches of the promising Kenneth Branagh . The actor would be present in three Branagh films, Henry V (1989) , To Die Yet (1991) and Hamlet (1996) .

The truth is that Jacobi’s presence in films has always been in secondary roles, and the same thing was pointed to big blockbusters – Gladiator (2000), The Magical Nanny (2006), Underworld: Evolution (2006) – as to such strange films like the infumable Spanish Arrhythmia (2003). He did have a leading role in Love Is the Devil (1998), about the Irish painter and homosexual Francis Bacon. Precisely Jacobi is also homosexual, and she has lived for almost 30 years with fellow actor Richard Clifford , with whom she formalized her civil union once the corresponding law was approved in the United Kingdom.

This great actor was knighted in the UK and Denmark and is still more active than ever. On stage his recent work in “King Lear” has been lauded, and in theaters he has bit parts in the titles of The King’s Speech and There Be Dragons .