James Wilby Movies
A consummately British leading man, actor James Wilby cut his thespian teeth in the British theater world and appeared in a number of British period films during the 1980s and 1990s.Though he was born abroad, Wilby was educated in England, attending a private school and Durham University. Intent on becoming an actor, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the early '80s and began acting in plays, including Another Country. He added films to his resumé, with small roles in the drama Privileged (1982), alongside fellow newcomer Hugh Grant, and the Lewis Carroll biopic Dreamchild (1985).
Wilby firmly established himself as a rising British film actor with producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory's adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel Maurice in 1987. Centering on love affairs between Wilby's 1910s title youth and Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves, Maurice earned Wilby and Grant the Best Actor prize at theVenice Film Festival and an international art house audience. Wilby garnered more accolades for his performance as the repressed 1930s husband caught in a love triangle with wife Kristin Scott Thomas and interloper Rupert Graves in the highly regarded Evelyn Waugh adaptation A Handful of Dust (1988). Continuing his winning streak, Wilby subsequently appeared in Masterpiece Theater's well-mounted miniseries of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1989), and co-starred with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in another acclaimed Merchant/Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster, Howards End (1992). Though the rest of Wilby's 1990s movies were not as impressively received, he continued to appear regularly in British films and TV, including Immaculate Conception (1992), the World War I drama Regeneration (1997), and the children's movie Tom's Midnight Garden (1998). Wilby reunited with Ismail Merchant in the producer's directorial effort Cotton Mary (1999), but the British colonial drama did not match the success of Wilby's prior Merchant/Ivory work.
Wilby subsequently appeared among the distinguished ensemble populating Robert Altman's Oscar-winning period piece Gosford Park (2001). As "upstairs" guest the Honorable Freddie Nesbitt, Wilby was a most dishonorable schemer and a possible murder suspect in Altman's witty anti-Merchant Ivory dissection of the British class system and its usual depiction in polished costume dramas and Agatha Christie murder mysteries. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- 1985
"The Crooked Man" is an episode of the television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an excellent adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories, produced in Britain for Granada TV. In this episode, directed by Alan Grint, Jeremy Brett portrays the famed detective, aided by his companion Dr. Watson (David Burke) as the two help investigate and solve the mysterious murder of Colonel Barclay (Denys Hawthorne). This episode, written by Alfred Shaughnessy, re-creates the adventures of Conan Doyle's Victorian detective with impeccable faithfulness to the original story first published in the Strand Magazine during the late-19th century. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeremy Brett, David Burke, (more)
- 1982
This British drama is thought to be the first student feature film made at Oxford University. It is also notable for marking the film debut of actors Hugh Grant, Imogen Stubbs, and James Wilby. The story is focused on a group of undergraduates, one of whom considers himself a fine actor. During a production of The Duchess of Malfi, he attempts to seduce the leading lady, but she rejects him. To console himself, he begins going after the wife of his well-born friend. When his friend catches the aspiring actor messing with his wife, he challenges him to a duel. Ever the gentleman, the nobleman opts to kill himself during the duel rather than take the life of the actor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
