Ben Daniels

Ben Daniels (born 10 June 1964) is an English actor. Initially a stage actor, Daniels was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor for Never the Sinner (1991), the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for 900 Oneonta (1994), Best Actor in the M.E.N. Theatre Awards for Martin Yesterday (1998), and won the 2001 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the Arthur Miller play All My Sons.

In 2008, Daniels made his Broadway début in a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. Daniels has also appeared on popular television series including Cutting It (2002–04), The Virgin Queen (2005), Law & Order: UK (2009–11), The Paradise (2013), House of Cards (2013–14), and The Exorcist (2016–17).

On 1 April 2018 he appeared in the NBC live televised concert rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar as Pontius Pilate. Daniels played Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon in the third season of Netflix series The Crown. Daniels starred in the role of Walter Sampson in the Netflix superhero series, Jupiter's Legacy.

In 2023 he played the character of General Bel Riose in the Apple TV+ science fiction series Foundation.

Daniels was born on 10 June 1964 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. His father was an engineer at Rolls-Royce and later a grocer, while his mother owned a children's clothes shop. He has recalled: "I was quite a shy child, but quite disruptive as well. I was very sneaky and underhanded."

Daniels was educated at Manor Park School, a state comprehensive school in Nuneaton, near Coventry, in Warwickshire (since closed). According to Daniels, drama lessons at O-levels gave him a voice, and when he attended sixth form studies at Stratford College between 1980 and 1982, doing A-levels in theatre studies and English literature, he attended Royal Shakespeare Company performances. A fellow student recalled that Daniels, whom he knew as Dave, "was very serious about his work, and struck me as incredibly intelligent... you got the sense his mind was working; the cogs were ticking over". Daniels subsequently trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for three years.

One of Daniels' earliest roles was as Justin Hayward, the lead singer of the Moody Blues, as a teenager in two of the band's music videos, "Your Wildest Dreams" (1986) and "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" (1988). In 1992, he made an appearance in the infamous plane crash episode "Cascade" of the television show Casualty, playing the co-pilot of the doomed plane. He has taken on parts in many British television dramas, such as Robin in The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), the Biblical character Jonathan in the 1997 Emmy-nominated TV film David, the philandering Finn Bevan in Cutting It (2002–2005), and Nicholas Brocklehurst in the BBC television miniseries The State Within (2006). The latter role was notable for an unexpected same-sex kiss between Daniels' character and another person. In 2008 he appeared in Lark Rise to Candleford, a BBC production based on three semi-autobiographical novels about the English countryside written by Flora Thompson.

Daniels has also played a number of real-life characters, such as German State Secretary Dr. Josef Bühler in Conspiracy, a 2001 dramatisation of the Wannsee Conference at which the Final Solution was endorsed. He also played the author and journalist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, in Ian Fleming: Bondmaker (2005), as well as Sir Francis Walsingham in The Virgin Queen (2005) and English writer Saki in Who Killed Mrs De Ropp? (2007). In addition, he has made guest appearances in a number of British TV drama series, including Soldier Soldier (1992), A Touch of Frost (1992), Outside Edge (1994), Spooks (2005), and Merlin (2011). In 2017, Daniels made a guest appearance as a priest in a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons.