Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage and screen actors both in his native UK and internationally with his undisputed reputation mostly enhanced by his unparalleled interpretation as Agatha Christie’s suave Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot in scores of late 1980s and ’90s mini-movies, London-born actor David Suchet’s early interest in the theater led to his membership with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain in the 1960s following graduation from high school. He then studied for three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and, after a significant route in repertory work, became a company member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973 where he was also evolved as one of its dominant players by decade’s end.
In the 1970s Suchet also began to come into his own on British television. In classical tradition, his first television movie was A Tale of Two Cities (1980). His first cinema detective has been a Greek inspector in the Disney mystery-comedy Trenchcoat (1983), followed by a range of film roles that express the width of his acting qualities, such as a Middle Eastern terrorist in The Little Drummer Girl (1984), a Russian operative in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), a French hunter in Bigfoot and the Hendersons (1987), a Polish bishop in To Kill a Priest (1988) and Napoleon in in Sabotage! (2000).
His masterful work in television roles also includes portrayals of historical, biblical, entertainment and fictional figures, such as Sigmund Freud in Freud (1984), news reporter William L. Shirer in Murrow (1986), Aaron in Moses (1995), movie mogul Louis B. Mayer in RKO 281 (1999), Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII (2003)), vampire nemesis Van Helsing in Dracula (2006) and Robert Maxwell in Maxwell (2007).
Widely regarded as the one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, David Suchet always offers staggering work full of generously euphoric delight, with a theatre course that includes memorable stunning incarnations such as the Shakespearean ones of Iago in “Othello”, Tybalt in “Romeo and Juliet”, Caliban in “The Tempest” and “Timon of Athens”, as well as in roles such as George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1996 and, from 1998 to 2001, as composer Salieri in “Amadeus”, a mesmerizing performance for which he received a Tony nomination after its Broadway presentation. Long wed to former actress Sheila Ferris, the couple has a son and daughter. His older brother is BBC newscaster-turned-journalist John Suchet.
