DATE OF BIRTH : 1st June 1944
BORN : Salford, Manchester
LIVES : Highgate
WIFE : Barbara Lord (dancer from Pans People). Married in August 1975.
CHILDREN : One son, Barney (b.1977), and one daughter, Kate (b.1979).
FAMILY : Older brother, Harry.
STUDIED: Studied Law at Manchester University for a year. ‘It all went pear-shaped. I walked away before the end of my first year. I was trying to switch courses and read drama instead of law, but I needed to get a year’s theatre experience in order to qualify for the course. So at 19 I wrote off to a repertory theatre company, got a job and never went back to university.’
FIRST JOB : Stoke-on-Trent in Theatre-in-the-Round. ‘To get my first job as an untrained actor working with the famous director Peter Cheeseman was extraordinary. I learned to act totally truthfully. As the audience is all around, you simply cannot cheat.’
WORST JOB : Relief steward on a cross-channel steamer as a 17 year old student. ‘We had nowhere to sleep, and nowhere to stay. I had to live on the boat and sleep in the lounge.’
ON JOINING HOLBY : A newspaper headline on his anticipated debut read ‘Jesus joins Holby’ – amused, Robert said ‘I’m going to cut it out, get it framed and hang the cutting in the loo!’
ON BEING SQUEAMISH : ‘I’m not good with real blood, but luckily I’m fine with the fake stuff’
ON ACTING : ‘I DID say about 30 years ago that I would not be acting all my life. I’d be doing something else in the business, but not performing. It is extraordinary how wrong I was, and Holby City has confirmed what I had been starting to suspect for the past 10 years. Acting really is what I do. I have to confess that my acting defines me. It is who I am. I know this now.’
TELEVISION CREDITS : Thriller; Zodiac; Roses, Roses All The Way; Tower of London – The Innocent; Season of the Witch; Hunting of Lionel Crane; Sentimental Education; Doomwatch; Jude the Obscure; Mrs Warren’s Profession; Mr Rolls and Mrs Royce; The Edwardians; Is Nellie Dead?; Lady Killer; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Death to Sister Mary; Looking for Clancy; Jesus of Nazareth; The Four Feathers; Pygmalion; The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Frankenstein; Shaka Zulu; Hannay; Pasternak; Canned Carrott; Countryfile; Merlin of the Crystal Cave; The First Circle; Das Lange Gespräch mit dem Vogel; The Golden Years; The Detectives; Treasure Island; Pride of Africa; Escape
FILM CREDITS : Robbery; The Italien Job; Walk a Crooked Path; Secrets; Asylum; Shelley; Running Scared; The Asphyx; Mahler; Tommy; Al di là del bene e del male; The Thirty-Nine Steps; Harlequin; Jane Austen in Manhattan; The Survivor; Imperativ; The Jigsaw Man; What Waits Below; D’Annunzio; Laggiù nella giungla; Shaka Zulu; Segno del comando; Chunuk Bair; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Kings and Queens of England Volume I & II; Mudan Ting: The Peony Pavilion – A Kunju Opera
THEATRE CREDITS : A Smashing Day; Uburoi; Pirates; Hamlet; The Lady from the Sea; Glasstown; Travesties; Terra Nove; Private Dick; Tovarich; Sherlock Holmes – The Musical; Kind Hearts and Coronets; Double Double; Single Spies; The Picture of Dorian Grey; Jeffery Bernard is Unwell
AGENT : Diamond Management, 31 Percy Street, London, W1T 2DD.
Interviews
holby.tv : Robert Powell S8 Interview
holby.tv shop > Robert Powell
