Detailed Biography

Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE is a BAFTA award-nominated English actor and occasional presenter.

Early life

Spall, third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London; his father, Joe, was a postal worker, and his mother, Sylvia, a hairdresser. He trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA, where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor in his year. His brother, Matthew, is studio director of the computer games company Morpheme.

Career

Initially notable in the UK for playing the gormless Barry Taylor in all four series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet alongside actors such as Jimmy Nail, Kevin Whately, Christopher Fairbank and Christine Garner and Kevin in Outside Edge alongside Robert Daws and Josie Lawrence, he has since starred in films such as Crusoe, Secrets & Lies, Shooting the Past, Rock Star, The Last Samurai, and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. He gained international recognition as Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. In 1991 he guest starred in the series 5 Red Dwarf episode Back to Reality.

Spall played the starring role of Albert Pierrepoint in the 2005 film Pierrepoint, which was released as The Last Hangman in the United States. In the 2006 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Spall voiced Phil Collins' manager, Barry Mickelthwaite. In 2007, he starred as Nathaniel in Disney's Enchanted and Beadle Bamford in Tim Burton's production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

On 31 December 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire .

Personal life

Spall is married and has three children: Mercedes, , Pascale and Rafe , who is also an actor. He lives in a large house in Forest Hill a suburb of south-east London.

In 1996, Spall was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, but has since been in remission. He has said of his illness:

"I didn't know what made me ill but stress had something to do with it and the point is now to head off stress at the pass. It made me aware of things and become more selective. I am less worried about employment. I really do my homework so I am not getting stressed on the set because I don't know what I'm doing."