John Bell (actor)
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John Bell is an acclaimed Australian actor and theatre personality.
In a career of acting in, directing, and managing theatres, John Bell has been instrumental in shaping the Australian theatre industry.
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Career Moves
- While at High School (Marist Brothers at Maitland) he developed and performed one-man shows.
- Old Tote Theatre Company
- five years with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Great Britain
- 1970s - Taught at National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA)
- major state theatre companies as actor and/or director
- co-founder of the Nimrod Theatre Company in Sydney
- producer/presenter for David Williamson's Travelling North, The Club, The Removalists and Peter Kenna's A Hard God
- productions of Measure For Measure, Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth, etc
The Bell Shakespeare Company
In 1990, John founded The Bell Shakespeare Company and has produced, among others, Hamlet, Romeo And Juliet, The Taming Of The Shrew, Richard III, Pericles, Henry 4, Henry 5, Julius Caesar, Antony And Cleopatra, The Comedy Of Errors, Hamlet and The Servant of Two Masters.
His roles for the Company include Shylock, Richard III, Macbeth, Malvolio, Coriolanus, Leontes, Prospero, King Lear and Ulysses.
Contemporaries / friends
- Attended university with Clive James and Germaine Greer.
- Contemporary and friend of Bruce Beresford (film director, with whom he shared a house and for whom he did some film acting), Ken Horler, Mungo McCallum (writer), Richard Wherret, John Gaden, Laurie Oakes (journalist), and Les Murray (poet).
Awards
In 2002, John Bell's performance of Richard, Duke of Gloucester earned him a Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor.
His achievements in theatre have been acknowledged by the Universities of Newcastle (1994) and Sydney (1996) who have both awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.
He has also been honoured with an OBE and AM.
In 2003 the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, presented Bell with the Cultural Leader of the Year Award.