Alex Jennings played Prince Charles, then the uncle who gave up the throne
Alex Jennings is the only performer to win Olivier Awards for drama, musical and comedy. On screen he has become a specialist in royalty: Prince Charles in The Queen, the abdicated Edward VIII in The Crown, and Leopold I of Belgium in Victoria. In 2024 he was made a CBE for services to drama.
Jennings was born in Romford, Essex, on 10 May 1957. After a degree from Warwick, where he combined English with theatre, he finished in 1978 and spent two years training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His career began in regional repertory in the early 1980s. A 1985 production of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which he played Robespierre among other parts, introduced him to the director Nicholas Hytner, who has cast him many times since.
The stage awards came across genres. Too Clever by Half, with Jennings cast as Gloumov, earned him the 1988 Olivier for best comedy performance. His title role in Peer Gynt for the Royal Shakespeare Company brought the best actor prize, and his Henry Higgins in the 2002 revival of My Fair Lady at Drury Lane took the musical award. For the RSC he also played Hamlet and Richard II, and at the National Theatre he portrayed George W. Bush in David Hare's Stuff Happens and Mikhail Bulgakov in Collaborators. He later took over as Willy Wonka in the West End musical of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in 2016 returned to Higgins in an Australian production directed by Julie Andrews.
His film breakthrough came in 2006 as Charles in Stephen Frears's The Queen, opposite Helen Mirren, a picture about the aftermath of Diana's death that drew six Academy Award nominations. A decade on he appeared in The Crown as the Duke of Windsor, great-uncle to the prince he had already played. For Hytner again, he portrayed the playwright Alan Bennett in The Lady in the Van alongside Maggie Smith.
Television has kept him busy too, from barrister Alan Cowdrey in Silk between 2011 and 2014 to Liberal MP Peter Bessell in A Very English Scandal and a judge in Steve McQueen's Mangrove. He is also a familiar voice on audiobooks and on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.
Source: Alex Jennings
