Nicholas Woodeson

Nicholas Woodeson (born November 30, 1949) is an English film, television and theatre actor, and Drama Desk and Olivier award nominee.

Woodeson was born in Sudan and lived in the Middle East as a boy. He started performing at prep school in Sussex, and Marlborough College. He read English at the University of Sussex, and became involved in student drama productions, where he met Michael Attenborough, Jim Carter, and Andy de la Tour. He took part in the 1970 National Student Drama Festival. Next was a season in rep at the Lyceum Theatre, Crewe, after deciding not to pursue an academic career. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1972–74).

His first work after drama school was a season at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (1974–75), in a company that included Jonathan Pryce (artistic director), Julie Walters, Pete Postlethwaite and Bill Nighy. He has worked in regional theatre in the UK and US, at the Hampstead Theatre Club, the Young Vic and the Almeida Theatre in London and at the Manhattan Theatre Club (Off-Broadway). He joined the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1982 and worked with them for seven years. On Broadway his work includes Straker in Man and Superman (1978), Piaf (1981), Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls (1995), and Burleigh in Mary Stuart (2009). In 2011, he played Mr Prince in the National Theatre revival of Odets' Rocket to the Moon. He has appeared in the West End in Funny Peculiar (1976), in Good (1982) (also Broadway), as Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls (2009), as Bonesy in Jumpers (2003) (also Broadway), as Mussabini in Chariots of Fire (2012), and as Harold Wilson in The Audience (2015). He has been in two productions of Pinter's 'The Birthday Party', playing McCann at the National Theatre in 1994, and Goldberg in the Lyric Hammersmith's 50th centenary production in 2008, and two productions of Pinter's The Homecoming, playing Lenny in the 25th Anniversary West End revival in 1991, and Max at the RSC in 2011.