England's premier acting knight, SIR JOHN GIELGUD portrays the role of Oswald, Guinevere's faithful family retainer. "First Knight" director Jerry Zucker was delighted when Gielgud accepted the small but crucial role.
Gielgud has combined a glittering stage career, both as actor and director, with increasingly successful film and television ventures. He won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as Dudley Moore's butler in "Arthur," and is well remembered for his contributions to films as diverse as "The Elephant Man," "Chariots of Fire," "Gandhi," "The Shooting Party," "Plenty" and "Shining Through." The television mini-series has also benefited from his august presence: "War and Remembrance," "Brideshead Revisited," "Inside the Third Reich," "Wagner," "QB VII," "The Far Pavilions" and "Summer's Lease" among them.
Prior to his involvement in "First Knight," Gielgud joined Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer for "Scarlett," the sequel to "Gone With the Wind," playing the grandfather.
Born in 1904, Gielgud made his stage debut at 19 with one line in "Henry V." He rapidly developed a reputation as an extraordinary performer of the Shakespearean canon, creating a sensation with his youthful Hamlet in 1930. During the '20s and '30s, he played Romeo, King Lear, Macbeth, Prospero, Anthony, Oberon and his favorite, Richard II.
Gielgud excels at comedy - in his youth he appeared in Noel Coward's "The Vortex" and "The Constant Nymph," and he played John Worthing in "The Importance of Being Earnest."
As director of "Romeo and Juliet," Gielgud also alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with Laurence Olivier.
During World War II, Gielgud entertained the troops with tours of "Hamlet" and "Blithe Spirit" and, in the '50s, he enjoyed great success in the commercial Theatre in hits like "The Lady's Not for Burning" and "Five Finger Exercise." He devoted much of the '60s to a world tour of his solo recital "Ages of Man" and in the '70s, he collaborated with Ralph Richardson in productions of David Storey's "Home" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land."
Gielgud made his film debut in 1924 with "Who Is That Man," followed by noteworthy roles in "The Secret Agent," "Julius Caesar" (as Cassius to Marlon Brando's Mark Antony), "Richard III," "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," "Saint Joan," "Becket" (earning an Academy Award nomination as King Louis VII, opposite Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole), "Chimes at Midnight," "Shoes of the Fisherman," "Julius Caesar" (the title role this time, in 1970), "Galileo," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Providence," "11 Harrowhouse," "The Human Factor," "The Formula," Andrzej Wajda's "The Conductor," "Shining Through," Peter Greenaway's controversial "Prospero's Books" and "The Power of One."
Gielgud was knighted in 1953 for services to the arts. He has published three volumes of autobiography, "Early Stages" in 1953, "Distinguished Company" in 1972 and "An Actor and His Times" in 1979.
