Jim Broadbent biography

Synopsis

Early Career

Born on May 24, 1949, in Lincolnshire, England, Broadbent attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in London before launching a distinguished stage career in the 1970s, performing. He performed with several acclaimed British directors, including Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and Mike Leigh, whose long and fruitful professional association with Broadbent began with the plays Ecstasy (1979) and Goosepimples (1981).

Broadbent made his feature film debut in 1978 with a small role in the British film The Shout. He worked steadily on stage and on television, appearing in the 1977 science-fiction TV miniseries Illuminatus, Leigh's 1982 television feature Birth of a Nation, and a 1985 BBC adaptation of Silas Marner. He also had small roles in two films by the eccentric but acclaimed director Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). In 1986, Broadbent landed his biggest film role to that date, receiving second billing to Anthony Hopkins in Mike Newell's feature directorial debut, The Good Father (1987).

Career Highlights

While Broadbent's first American film, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) was a somewhat inauspicious beginning, he continued to do high quality work in his native England. His first leading role in a film came in Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet (1990), a comedy about an offbeat family that won three awards from the National Society of Film Critics (U.S), including Best Film. In Newell's well reviewed Enchanted April (1992), Broadbent appeared alongside Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright, among others, and in the highly controversial The Crying Game (1992), he played a kindly bartender.

In 1994, Broadbent appeared as a highly successful stage actor with a tendency to overeat in Woody Allen's acclaimed comedy Bullets Over Broadway, also starring John Cusack and Dianne Wiest. His talent for fine supporting and character roles was honed over the next several years, as he appeared in such films as Richard III (1995), also starring Ian McKellen; Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997); and most notably Little Voice (1998), also starring Michael Caine, for which he earned rave reviews for his performance as a nightclub owner.

In Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh's 1999 film about the legendary composers Gilbert & Sullivan, Broadbent turned in what many said was his finest performance, playing the blustery, ambitious William Gilbert.