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Simon Russell Beale

British actor and music historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ971782
Source-derived summary

Sir Simon Russell Beale (born 12 January 1961) is an English actor. Once described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation", he has received various accolades, including a Tony Award, three Laurence Olivier Awards, and two British Academy Television Awards. For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

Beale started his acting career at the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He has received ten Olivier Award nominations, winning three awards for his performances in Volpone (1996), Candide (2000), and Uncle Vanya (2003). For his work on the Broadway stage he has received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination for his performance as George in the Tom Stoppard play Jumpers in 2004. For his role as Henry Lehman in The Lehman Trilogy, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor.

Beale made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama Orlando (1992). He gained prominence for his roles in Persuasion (1995), Hamlet (1996), My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Mary Queen of Scots (2018), Benediction (2021), and The Outfit (2022). In 2017, he portrayed Lavrentiy Beria in Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin, for which he received the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Editorial summary

“Simon Russell Beale” enters the record as british actor and music historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Simon, Russell and Beale can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961, 2019, 1996, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-01-12. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Simon, Russell and Beale.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Simon Russell Beale” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Simon, Russell and Beale provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q971782. VIAF identifies the subject as 79997532. The Library of Congress control number is n95119133. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 2019, 1996 and 2000.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Simon Russell Beale”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Simon Russell Beale primary sources, Simon Russell Beale archive and Simon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Simon Russell Beale”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Simon Russell Beale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.