Simon Montagu McBurney (born 25 August 1957) is an English actor, playwright, and theatrical director. He is the founder and artistic director of the
Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films ''
The Manchurian Candidate
''The Manchurian Candidate'' is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.
The ...
'', ''
Friends with Money
''Friends with Money'' is a 2006 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. It opened the 2006 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2006, and went into limited release in North America on April 7, 2006.
Plot
Olivia is ...
'', ''
The Last King of Scotland
''The Last King of Scotland'' is a novel by journalist Giles Foden,
published by Faber and Faber in 1998. Focusing on the rise of Ugandan President Idi Amin and his reign as dictator from 1971 to 1979, the novel, which interweaves fiction and ...
'', ''
The Golden Compass
''Northern Lights'' (titled ''The Golden Compass'' in North America and some other countries) is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published in 1995 by Scholastic UK. Set in a parallel universe, it follows the journey of Lyra Be ...
'', ''
The Duchess'', ''
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depic ...
'', ''
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1
''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1'' is a 2010 fantasy film directed by David Yates from a screenplay by Steve Kloves. The film is the first of two cinematic parts based on the 2007 novel '' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hall ...
'', ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
'', ''
Magic in the Moonlight
''Magic in the Moonlight'' is a 2014 romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. It is Allen's 44th film. The film stars Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Eileen Atkins, and Simon McBurney. S ...
'', ''
The Theory of Everything'', and ''
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation''. He plays Cecil the choirmaster in BBC's ''
The Vicar of Dibley
''The Vicar of Dibley'' is a British sitcom which originally ran on BBC One from 10 November 1994 to 1 January 2007. It is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1992 changes ...
''.
Early life
McBurney was born in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, England. His father,
Charles McBurney, was an American archaeologist and academic of
Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather was American surgeon
Charles McBurney, who was credited with describing the medical sign
McBurney's point
McBurney's point is the name given to the point over the right side of the abdomen that is one-third of the distance from the anterior superior iliac spine to the umbilicus (navel). This is near the most common location of the appendix.
Locatio ...
. Simon McBurney's mother, Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), was a British secretary of English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. His parents were distant cousins who met during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
His older brother is composer and writer
Gerard McBurney
Gerard McBurney (born 20 June 1954) is a British composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher and writer.
Life
Born in Cambridge, England, he is the son of Charles McBurney, an American archaeologist, and Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), ...
.
He studied
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
at
Peterhouse
Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite o ...
,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, graduating in 1980. After his father died, he moved to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and trained for the theatre at the
Jacques Lecoq Institute.
Career
McBurney is a founder and artistic director of the UK-based theatre company
Complicite, which performs throughout the world. In 1997 he was awarded the
Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, with the
Théâtre de Complicité. He directed their productions of ''Street of Crocodiles'' (1992); ''The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol'' (1994), which was adapted from the
John Berger
John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism ''Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...
trilogy ''Into Their Labors''; ''
To the Wedding'' (another Berger collaboration); ''
Mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
'' (1999); ''
The Elephant Vanishes
is a collection of 17 short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then collections. The contents of this compilation were selected by Gary Fisketj ...
'' (2003); ''
A Disappearing Number'' (2007); ''A Dog's Heart'' (2010); ''
The Master and Margarita
''The Master and Margarita'' (russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐf ...
'' (2011), and ''
The Kid Stays in the Picture
''The Kid Stays in the Picture'' is a 1994 print autobiography by film producer Robert Evans. A film adaptation of the book was released in 2002.
The title comes from a line attributed to studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, who was defending Evans a ...
'' (2017).
''
A Disappearing Number'' was a devised piece conceived and directed by McBurney, taking as its inspiration the story of the collaboration between two of the 20th century's most remarkable pure mathematicians, the Indian genius
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan (; born Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, ; 22 December 188726 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis ...
, and Cambridge don
G.H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...
. It played at the
Barbican
A barbican (from fro, barbacane) is a fortified outpost or fortified gateway, such as at an outer fortifications, defense perimeter of a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes.
Europe ...
in autumn 2008 and toured internationally. In February 2009, McBurney directed the Complicite production ''Shun-kin'', based on two texts by
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. It was produced in London and Tokyo in 2010.
On a freelance basis, McBurney directed the following: ''
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' (german: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, links=no), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago m ...
'' and ''
All My Sons'' (2008) (both in New York City), and live comedy shows, including
Lenny Henry
Sir Lenworth George Henry (born 29 August 1958) is a British actor, comedian, singer, television presenter and writer.
Henry gained success as a stand-up comedian and impressionist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in ''The Lenn ...
's ''So Much Things To Say'' and
French and Saunders
''French and Saunders'' is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comedy duo and namesake Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders that originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1987 to 1993, and later on BBC One until 2017. It is a ...
' ''Live in 2000''.
McBurney is an established screen actor. He played the recurring role of Cecil the choirmaster in ''
The Vicar of Dibley
''The Vicar of Dibley'' is a British sitcom which originally ran on BBC One from 10 November 1994 to 1 January 2007. It is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1992 changes ...
'', CIA computer whiz Garland in ''
Body of Lies'', Dr. Atticus Noyle in ''
The Manchurian Candidate
''The Manchurian Candidate'' is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.
The ...
'' (2004), British diplomat Nigel Stone in ''
The Last King of Scotland
''The Last King of Scotland'' is a novel by journalist Giles Foden,
published by Faber and Faber in 1998. Focusing on the rise of Ugandan President Idi Amin and his reign as dictator from 1971 to 1979, the novel, which interweaves fiction and ...
'', the
metrosexual
''Metrosexual'' is a portmanteau of '' metropolitan'' and ''sexual'' coined in 1994, describing a man of ambiguous sexuality, (especially one living in an urban, post-industrial, capitalist culture) who is especially meticulous about his groomin ...
husband Aaron in ''
Friends with Money
''Friends with Money'' is a 2006 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. It opened the 2006 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2006, and went into limited release in North America on April 7, 2006.
Plot
Olivia is ...
'', Fra Pavel in ''
The Golden Compass
''Northern Lights'' (titled ''The Golden Compass'' in North America and some other countries) is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published in 1995 by Scholastic UK. Set in a parallel universe, it follows the journey of Lyra Be ...
'',
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...
in ''
The Duchess'', and Oliver Lacon in ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
''. He also wrote the story and was an executive producer for ''
Mr. Bean's Holiday
''Mr. Bean's Holiday'' is a 2007 comedy film directed by Steve Bendelack and written by Hamish McColl and Robin Driscoll, from a story penned by Simon McBurney. Based on the British sitcom series ''Mr. Bean'' created by Rowan Atkinson and Richar ...
''.
From 2010 to 2014, he appeared in the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
'', portraying the role of Archdeacon Robert. McBurney provided the voice of
'' (2010). In the series ''
. He is the Artiste Associé of the 66th
(2012). He starred in ''The Encounter'', about photographer
becoming lost in the Javari Valley in Brazil and his experiences with locals, which premiered at the 2015
. In July 2015, he starred as Atlee, the director of
''.
In September 2019, the Complicité production of ''The Encounter'' was ranked by ''
'' writers as the 13th best theatre show since 2000.
In 2007, he met concert pianist Cassandra "Cassie" Yukawa. They have since married, and reside in
. His sister-in-law is violinist
(OBE) "for services to Drama". He is an Ambassador for
, the global movement for tribal peoples' rights.