Download Bill Homewood (OA 1965)

Bill Homewood (OA 1965)
Actor and Writer
After leaving St Albans School, Bill studied Singing and Guitar at the Guildhall
School of Music & Drama, in London. While there, Bill did holiday cabaret
seasons and performed at night in various cabaret venues in London, including
the London Hilton, where he became the regular lounge cabaret act for 4 years.
Bill joined the New Opera Company of Sadlers Wells at the London Coliseum as
a principal, playing opposite John Tomlinson as Historian in Time Off, and
performed in concert and oratorio. At the same time he travelled in solo cabaret
all over Britain, and started his television career on BBC Children’s Television in
such shows as Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore, The Adventure Game and So You Want to be
Top.
On the side, Bill worked as Examiner in (Classical Spanish) Guitar at the Guildhall School of Music &
Drama, though his performing career was veering away from Music towards Theatre. In 1974 Bill
joined The Royal Shakespeare Company in The Hollow Crown for over 10 years, travelling with the
production throughout Europe and North America. Bill's other credits with the Royal Shakespeare
Company include Feste in Twelfth Night, Pleasure & Repentance and The Homecoming. He toured various
shows to European festivals with Prunella Scales, Timothy West, Judi Dench and Janet Suzman for
many years, and wrote/directed Fanny, Black Marigolds and Song of Songs, which he and Estelle Kohler
took to the National Theatre, the Edinburgh and Jerusalem Festivals, and toured throughout North
America.
He is a prolific television actor – in recent years he starred as the fearsome Basil Stoker (the football
coach they love to hate) in Nickelodeon’s long-running The Renford Rejects and he played Leonard, Head
of Scotland Yard Special Operations, in The Professionals. He filmed the lead roles of Como in Honour
Among Thieves, The Grand Master in CHESS and The Architect in Spirit of Seven.
Bill was the scheming Monty Harris. Mike Baldwin’s best friend, in Coronation Street. His innumerable
other film and television credits include London’s Burning; Berkeley Square; Les Sons de la Vie; Snap; The
Nowhere Man; Hamlet; The Talisman; title role in Dalton’s Eyes; Woof!; The Sharp End; The Bill; Casualty;
The Adventure Game; Crocodile Shoes; title role in Wise Guy; joint lead in Shakespeare Lady; Chess; Spirit of
Seven, etc, etc. He was the star of the BBC TV children’s series Spytrap, created for him.
His innumerable West End and touring credits include Zinnowitz in Grand Hotel, Antipholus in The
Boys from Syracuse, Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar and
Firmin in Phantom of the Opera. He won the Liverpool Post Best Actor Award for Malvolio in Twelfth
Night. Bill has many radio/commentary/commercial voice-over credits. His nine solo CDs of classic
novels including Les Misérables, The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Count of Monte
Cristo and King Solomon’s Mines are released on the Naxos AudioBook label.
Occasionally Bill works as a Speech & Communication consultant – helping CEO’s and upper
management cope with public speaking, presentation, television and press interviews, etc. His book
Theatrical Letters was published in 1995. Bill’s innumerable other writing credits include many
playscripts, commissioned screenplays, the playscript of Kafka’s The Trial, premiered at the Young Vic
Theatre and published poetry.