Jason Isaacs is an English actor.
He is known for his performance as the Death Eater Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films,
the brutal Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee
in the American television series Brotherhood.
Though most of his work has been in film and television, it also includes stage performances;
most notably as Louis Ironson in Declan Donnellan's 1992 and 1993 Royal National Theatre London
premières of Parts One and Two of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America:
A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and as Ben, one of two hitmen, playing opposite Lee
Evans as Gus, in Harry Burton's 2007 critically acclaimed 50th-anniversary revival of Nobel
Laureate Harold Pinter's 1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Trafalgar Studios.
He starred in the National Broadcasting Company drama Awake as Detective Michael Britten from
March to May 2012.
Early life and education Jason Isaacs was born on 6 June 1963, in Liverpool,
Lancashire, to Jewish parents.
His father was a jewellery-maker.
Isaacs spent his earliest childhood years in an "insular" and "closely knit" Jewish
community of Liverpudlians, of which his Eastern European great-grandparents were founder-members
in leafy Liverpool suburb, Childwall.
The third of four sons, Isaacs attended a Jewish school and a cheder twice a week as
a young adult.
When he was 11, he moved with his family to Northwest London, attending the Haberdashers'
Aske's Boys' School, in Elstree, Hertsmere, Hertfordshire, where he was in the same year
as film reviewer Mark Kermode.
He describes his childhood as "preparation" for portraying the "unattractive", villainous
characters whom he has most often played.
National Front members frequently harassed Isaacs and his friends throughout the 1970s
and 1980s.
Following his more traditionally inclined brothers, who became respectively a doctor,
a lawyer and an accountant, Isaacs studied law at Bristol University, but he became more
actively involved in the drama society, eventually performing in over 30 plays and performing
each summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, first with Bristol University and then, twice,
with the National Student Drama Company.
After graduating from Bristol he went immediately to train at London's Central School of Speech
and Drama.
Isaacs' parents eventually repatriated to Israel.
Career After completing his training as an actor,
Isaacs almost immediately began appearing on the stage and on television; his film debut
was in a minor role as a doctor in Mel Smith's The Tall Guy.
He was initially known as a TV actor in the UK, with starring roles in the ITV drama Capital
City and the BBC drama Civvies and guest roles in series such as Taggart, Inspector Morse,
and Highlander: The Series.
He also played Michael Ryan in ITV1's adaptation of Martina Cole's novel Dangerous Lady, directed
by Jack Woods and produced by Lavinia Warner, in 1995.
On stage he portrayed the "emotionally waffling" gay Jewish office temp Louis Ironson in Tony
Kushner's Pulitzer-Prize-winning Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,
at the Royal National Theatre, in its London première, performing the role in both parts,
Part One: Millennium Approaches, in 1992, and Part Two: Perestroika, in 1993.
When auditioning for that role, he told the producers, "Look, I play all these tough guys
and thugs and strong, complex characters.
In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess.
Can't I for once play that on stage?"
His first Hollywood role was alongside Laurence Fishburne in the film Event Horizon in 1997,
in which he played a crew member ultimately killed by the protagonist-turned-antagonist
acted by Sam Neill.
Subsequently, he appeared in the Bruce Willis blockbuster Armageddon.
Initially called upon to take a fairly substantial role, Isaacs was eventually cast in a much
smaller capacity as a planet-saving scientist so that he could accommodate his commitment
to Divorcing Jack, a comedy thriller he was making with David Thewlis.
After portraying a priest opposite Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes in Neil Jordan's acclaimed
adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Isaacs played the charismatic honourable
priest opposite Kirsty Alley in the mini series The Last Don.
He then shone as "memorable" villain, Colonel William Tavington, in Roland Emmerich's American
Revolutionary War fictional film epic The Patriot.
Starring opposite Mel Gibson as the film's hero, and Heath Ledger as Gibson's screen
son, Isaacs portrays a sadistic British Army officer who kills Ledger's character, among
many other soldiers.
Although his work in the film earned him comparisons to Ralph Fiennes' portrayal of Nazi Amon Göth
in Schindler's List and mention of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, reaching
beyond being typecast as an historical villain, Isaacs chose to play a drag queen in his next
project, Sweet November, a romantic comedy-drama starring Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves.
Isaacs has appeared in many other films, most notably as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter
series of films.
Regarding the Harry Potter books by J.K.
Rowling, Isaacs has said: "I went off and read the books after the audition and I read
the first four books in one sitting – you know – didn't wash, didn't eat, drove around
with them on the steering wheel like a lunatic.
I suddenly understood why my friends, who I'd thought were slightly backward, had been
so addicted to these children's books.
They're like crack."
In "The Naked and the Dead", an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, on 26 November
2006, Neva Chonin names the character Lucius Malfoy one of the 12 "Sexiest Men Who Were
Never Alive" and Isaacs one of the 13 "Sexiest Men Who Are Real and Alive".
Prior to the making of the film, when asked whether or not he would be in Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix, Isaacs replied, "I hope so – you'll have to ask David.
I can't bear the idea that somebody else would get to wear my Paris Hilton wig, but you never
know."
Isaacs also talked to J.K.
Rowling on the inclusion of Lucius Malfoy in the then unpublished Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows, so that he would have a part in the seventh and final film: "The character
does not appear in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; but ... [Isaacs
joked], 'I fell to my knees and begged ... It didn't do any good.
I'm sure she doesn't need plot ideas from me.
But I made my point.
We'll see.
Like everybody else, I'm holding my breath to July to see what's in there.
I just want to bust out of prison, that's all.
I don't want to stay in Azkaban most of my life.' "
Ultimately Isaacs did reprise the role of Malfoy as a cameo appearance in Harry Potter
and the Half-Blood Prince, where he is seen in a moving portrait.
Afterwards, Isaacs reprised the role again in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part
1 and Part 2.
He has appeared in Dragonheart, Event Horizon, Black Hawk Down, Jackie Chan's The Tuxedo
and as George Darling and Captain Hook in P.J.
Hogan's adaptation of Peter Pan and as the voice of Admiral Zhao in the animated Nickelodeon
series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Isaacs played the leading role of Sir Mark Brydon, the British Ambassador to the US in
the BBC Four miniseries The State Within, for which he was nominated for the Best Performance
by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television for the 65th Golden Globe
Awards.
On British television, he also portrayed actor Harry H. Corbett in The Curse of Steptoe,
part of "a season of new one-off dramas for BBC Four revealing the stories behind some
of Britain's best loved television entertainers, and their achievements," first broadcast in
March 2008.
On American television, Isaacs appeared in three episodes of The West Wing in 2004, prior
to developing his most notable TV serial role, as Michael Caffee in Brotherhood.
Between 2 February and 24 March 2007, Isaacs played Ben, opposite Lee Evans, in the critically
acclaimed 50th-anniversary production of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, at Trafalgar Studios,
in London, his first theatre performance since appearing in The Force of Change.
Isaacs played Major Briggs, an American military officer, opposite Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear,
in Paul Greengrass's thriller Green Zone, a fictionalised drama set in Iraq after the
defeat of Saddam Hussein based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside
Baghdad's Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, for which production began in Morocco, in
January 2008.
In 2007, he was cast in Jan de Bont's then-still-upcoming film Stopping Power, to play its star John
Cusack's "nemesis", but, on 31 August 2007, Variety reported that the film, also planned
for release in 2009, had been cancelled after a financial backer pulled out.
Isaacs appeared in one episode of the TV show Entourage in the autumn of 2008 as Fredrick
Line.
In 2009, he was nominated at the British Academy Television Awards for Best Actor for his role
as Harry H. Corbett in The Curse of Steptoe.
On the evening of 2 May 2009, Isaacs performed the role of Ben again, opposite his Brotherhood
co-star Brian F. O'Byrne, in a "rehearsed reading" of The Dumb Waiter.
Their reading capped off the Harold Pinter Memorial Celebration being curated by Harry
Burton.
This tribute to Harold Pinter co-sponsored by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, of
The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, was part of the Fifth Annual
PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, held in New York City, from 27
April to 3 May 2009.
He provided the voice of Ra's al Ghul in the 2010 DC animated film, Batman: Under the Red
Hood and also the voice of Sinestro in the 2011 DC animated film Green Lantern: Emerald
Knights.
Isaacs starred as Detective Michael Britten in the NBC series Awake, which premiered on
1 March 2012, and ended in May 2012.
After Britten gets into a terrible car wreck with his family, his dreams begin to take
on two alternate realities, one in which his wife died in the crash and one in which his
son died.
Says Isaacs about the ambitious premise: “There’s no question it's challenging.
We’ve got a bunch of very experienced writers who have written things from HBO shows to
The X-Files, to 24 and everything in between.
And they are challenged.
All of them have said that it's the hardest job that they've ever had.
But sometimes that's a good thing.
… If it comes easily, that they could write in their sleep, I personally wouldn't want
to act – and I think the audience wouldn't want to watch."
In February 2014, the USA Network announced Isaacs has been cast in its upcoming action
adventure drama series, Dig.
Isaacs will portray an FBI agent in Jerusalem who uncovers a 2,000-year-old conspiracy while
investigating an archaeologist's murder.
The six-episode series is expected to premiere late-2014.
Personal life
Isaacs has lived with his partner BBC documentary filmmaker Emma Hewitt since 1988.
The couple began dating at the Central School, and have two daughters, Lilly and Ruby.
Despite Isaacs' screen celebrity as Lucius Malfoy, he maintains a relatively modest,
"calm, sedate and suburban" life, which he prefers to the "hideously compromised lives"
of the more rich and famous: "I imagine like most of us that I'd like obscene amounts of
money but the people I met and worked with who have those obscene amounts of money and
have obscene amounts of fame have awful lives.
Really.
I mean hideously compromised lives...."
Described as an "invisible star" who can still travel by the London Underground to film premières
unrecognised, he has observed: "They just think, who's that t*** in black tie?
As soon as I get on the red carpet they start screaming and screaming.
... It's laughable because when it's all over I go home on the Tube as well."
"I can go anywhere.
No one knows who I am.
I can go on the tube and bus and wander through the streets."
As a non-religious Jew, Isaacs has semi-jokingly called himself a "Jewish man who does almost
nothing Jewish in his life".
Isaacs is a firm, though not uncritical supporter of the Labour Party declaring, in April 2009:
"I am huge New Labour supporter.
They've done amazing things in terms of real money put into education, health service and
childcare.
But they've also, on this watch, done away with the right to silence, and been party
to an invasion of a country based on false pretexts.
They, and most of the West, have done away with the Geneva Convention...
all these things have happened on my watch, but I've done absolutely nothing about it
other than try to sound righteous."
Filmography Film
Television Theatre
Video games References
External links Jason Isaacs at the Internet Movie Database
"Jason Isaacs Biography".
Yahoo! Movies UK & Ireland.
uk.movies.yahoo.com.
Copyright Baseline 2006.
Retrieved 24 June 2008.
^ "Mark Kermode v Jason Isaacs on Johnny Depp".
BBC Radio 5 Live.
16 April 2008.
Retrieved 17 August 2008.
^ Lester, Paul.
"JC interview: Jason Isaacs".
The Jewish Chronicle.
Archived from the original on 4 February 2008.
Retrieved 29 June 2008.
^ Mitovich, Matt Webb.
"Interviews & Features: Jason Isaacs: More Than a Bad Brother".
TV Guide.
Archived from the original on 20 October 2008.
Retrieved 24 June 2008.
^ Hootie & the Blowfish. "2005 Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am Golf Tournament
Sets Record with $425,000 in Donations".
Press Release.
Archived from the original on 27 April 2006.
Retrieved 1 July 2008.
["Players: See Past Participants."]
^ Pfefferman, Naomi.
"More Than a Villain: With "The Patriot," Jason Isaacs, a British Jew, Cements His Reputation
as One of Hollywood's Hottest Heavies".
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
Retrieved 29 June 2008.
^ "Once a 'wimp,' Actor Thrives on Portraying Villains".
The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.
14 July 2000.
Retrieved 29 June 2008.
^ Marx, Rebecca Flint.
"Jason Isaacs: Biography".
Moviefone.
Retrieved 23 June 2008.