Scottish actor (born 1941)
Tommaso Antonio Conti (born 22 November 1941) is a Scottish actor. Conti has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play in role in Whose Life Is It Anyway? which he performed on Broadway and the West End in 1978 and 1979. He also directed the Frank D. Gilroy play Last Licks (1979) on Broadway. Conti returned to the West End portraying Jeffrey Bernard in the Keith Waterhouse play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (1989).
Conti received an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for Reuben, Reuben (1983). Conti also acted in such films as The Duellists (1977), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Saving Grace (1986), The Quick and the Dead (1987), Shirley Valentine (1989), The Tempest (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Paddington 2 (2017). He portrayed Albert Einstein in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023).
Early life
Tommaso Antonio Conti was born on 22 November 1941 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, the son of hairdressers Mary McGoldrick and Alfonso Conti.[1] After being raised Roman Catholic, he described himself as antireligious in 2011.[2] His father was Italian, while his mother was born and raised in Scotland to Irish parents.[3][4] Conti was educated at independent Catholic boys' school Hamilton Park[5] St Aloysius' College, Glasgow;[6] and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.[citation needed]
Career
Conti is a theatre, film, and television actor. He began working with the Dundee Repertory in 1959. He appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? in 1979, and in London, he played the lead in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Garrick Theatre.[citation needed] Besides taking the leading role in the TV versions of Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes and Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, Conti appeared in the "Princess and the Pea" episode of the family television series Faerie Tale Theatre, guest-starred on Friends and Cosby, and played opposite Nigel Hawthorne in a long-running series of Vauxhall Astra car advertisements in the United Kingdom from the early to the mid-1990s.[citation needed]
Conti has appeared in such films as Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Reuben, Reuben, American Dreamer, Shirley Valentine, Miracles, Saving Grace, Dangerous Parking, and Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase.[citation needed] Conti's novel The Doctor, about a former secret operations pilot for intelligence services, was published in 2004. According to the foreword, his friend Lynsey De Paul recommended the manuscript to publisher Jeremy Robson.[7]
He appeared in the BBC sitcom Miranda alongside Miranda Hart and Patricia Hodge, as Miranda's father, in the 2010 seasonal episode "The Perfect Christmas".[citation needed] His latest role is playing Albert Einstein in Christopher Nolan's 2023 thriller-drama Oppenheimer. Conti portrays Albert Einstein during his years working alongside J. Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist, also known as the father of atomic bomb. The film tells the story of the process that led humanity into producing the first atomic bomb during World War II. The film had one of the most successful opening weekends of 2023, and received wide critical acclaim.[citation needed]
Personal life
Conti has been married to Scottish actress Kara Wilson since 1967 and their daughter Nina is an actress and performs as a ventriloquist. According to Nina, her parents have an open marriage.[8]
Conti is a resident of Hampstead in northwest London, having lived in the area for several decades. Conti was part of a campaign against the opening of a Tesco supermarket in nearby Belsize Park.[9] Conti put his Hampstead house up for sale in 2015 for £17.5 million after his long-running opposition to the building plans of his neighbour, the footballer Thierry Henry.[10] Conti had also opposed development plans for Hampstead's Grove Lodge, the 18th-century Grade II listed former home of novelist John Galsworthy.[11]
Conti participated in a genetic-mapping project conducted by the company ScotlandsDNA (now called BritainsDNA). In 2012, Conti and the company announced that Conti shares a genetic marker with Napoléon Bonaparte.[12] Conti has said that he "burst out laughing" when told he was related to Napoléon on his father's side.[12]
Political views
Conti considered running as the Conservative candidate in the 2008 London mayoral election, but did not, and in the following election in 2012, he supported unsuccessful independent candidate Siobhan Benita.[13] In the run up to the 2015 general election, Conti said in an interview published in several newspapers that he was once a Labour supporter but had come to view socialism as a “religion” with a "vicious, hostile spirit".[14]
