Julian Neil Rohan Wadham was born on the 7th August 1958. He, at an early age, understood what it was like for boy actors to play female roles in the Shakespeare era, whilst attending Ampleforth College Junior School - a Catholic academy in Yorkshire for boys eight to 13 - he portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in a school play. The experience not only taught him a lesson in stage history, but it also trained him in the rudiments of acting and whet his appetite for theatre.
After graduating from London's Central School of Speech and Drama in 1980, he performed in various television and stage productions over the next decade, earning a 1983 nomination as Most Promising Newcomer from the London Theatre Critics for his role in Falkland South.
His roles in Our Country's Good, Serious Money, and Another Country helped those dramas win Best Play Laurence Olivier Awards in the 1980s. Wadham's television career has resulted in a number of industry awards. He won the Royal Television Society and Prix Europa prize for Goodbye, Cruel World and the Royal Television Society award for Blind Justice.
In the 1990s, he achieved worldwide recognition for roles as Sir James Chettam in the acclaimed TV miniseries Middlemarch and Madox in the Oscar-winning film The English Patient.
Wadham also has a prolific career in theatre, including The Madness of George III, The Changeling, A Letter of Resignation, David Hare's Plenty, The Good Samaritan at Hampstead, and, most recently, The Winter's Tale at the Royal National Theatre. His good looks and aristocratic bearing make him a popular choice among casting directors seeking a proper gentleman at home with beautiful women and high society. Wadham performs frequently for Britain's National Theatre in productions of such esteemed directors and producers as Richard Eyre, Harold Pinter, Peter Gill, Stuart Burge, and Max Stafford-Clark.
In cinema he was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild along with the other members of the cast. His performance in the role of Madox was simply superb and for me rates alongside Ralph Fiennes own on screen presence given the right role. More recently he was in Dominion : Prequel to the Exorcist – even with a poorer script he was able to rise above the film and give a good account as Major Granville. If you’re going to watch this movie for heavens sake go for Schraders version.
Unfortunately he devotes his time to theatre and TV and so doesn’t get the roles that he should be securing on the big screen – the caustic title of ‘character acter’ is difficult to shake. In the last few years he has been fairly prolific on British Television – but he is SO watchable this reviewer would love to see more of him in cinemas.