Sir Derek Jacobi is an English actor, best known to TV audiences for the title role in
I, Claudius. Other notable screen roles include the title role in
Cadfael, Sen. Gracchus in
Gladiator, Alan Turing in
Breaking the Code, Madson in
Dead Again, and the narrator of
In the Night Garden. He voiced the Master in the
Doctor Who animated special
Scream of the Shalka before guest-starring as the same character in the series proper in the episode "
Utopia". He also appeared in an episode of
Frasier as a thespian who, when Niles and Frasier were children, introduced them to the wonder of the theatre. When they met him again as adults and helped him get his own one-man show,
he wasn't as good as they remembered.He also has a distinguished stage career, having got his big break in
Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company, including
lots of Shakespeare; he has played
Hamlet over 400 times on stage, not to mention his performance in the BBC's Complete Television Shakespeare. (He was also in
Kenneth Branagh's film version of
Hamlet, as Hamlet's villainous uncle — another Claudius.)
He was knighted for Services to Drama in 1994.
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