BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Amanda Abbington Miss Mardle in Mr
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Amanda Abbington Miss Mardle in Mr. Selfridge Season 2 and Mary Morstan in Sherlock, Season 3 Beloved by PBS viewers as Jason Isaac’s destined love match in Case Histories, Series 1 on MYSTERY!, Amanda Abbington plays another romantically starved protagonist in Mr. Selfridge— namely the kind-hearted, cruelly exploited head of accessories, Miss Mardle. She also stars in Sherlock, Season 3 as Mary, the surprisingly complicated nurse/lover who is getting Martin Freeman’s Dr. Watson over the trauma of Sherlock’s supposed suicide. She previously worked with Freeman on the British television filmMen Only in 2000, and the two have been in close touch ever since. Amanda’s recent British TV credits include the one-off comedy Joe Mistry, the gritty drama series Postcode, and the supernatural soap opera Being Human, in which she played a vampire. Amanda is much admired in the UK for her starring role in the critically acclaimed comedy series Married Single Other, which aired in 2010. Poirot fans remember her as the voodoo-doll-making arts teacher, Miss Blake, in Cat Among the Pigeons, which aired on MYSTERY! in 2009. Jeremy Piven Harry Gordon Selfridge in Mr. Selfridge Chicago native Jeremy Piven stars as fellow Chicagoan Harry Gordon Selfridge in MASTERPIECE’s series about the mercantile genius who showed early 20th-century London how to shop. Among his many notable roles, Piven is best known as movie agent Ari Gold in the hit series Entourage, which aired for eight seasons and won Piven three Emmy® Awards and a Golden Globe®. The Entourage feature film, which will be produced by Warner Brothers, will start production in February in Los Angeles. In Summer 2014 he can be seen in Sin City; Dame to Kill For, by director Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez and opposite Tom Cruise in the Doug Liman film Edge of Tomorrow. His extensive career in television also includes the satirical Larry Sanders Show. In film, he starred in Mark Pellington’s drama I Melt with You, Gaby Dellal’s heartwrenching Angels Crest, Gary Fleder’s Runaway Jury, Todd Phillips’ hit comedy Old School, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, Peter Chelsom’s Serendipity, The Family Man, Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things and The Kingdom, Cameron Crowe’s Singles, Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces, Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla, and The Player for director Robert Altman. In 2005, Piven returned to his theater roots starring in the off-Broadway hit Fat Pig by Neil LaBute, for which he received a Distinguished Performance Honor from the Drama League. He also appeared as Bobby Gould on-Broadway in Speed-the-Plow. As a child growing up in Chicago, the eight-year-old Piven climbed on stage at the Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his father, Byrne, and mother, Joyce Piven. He is still very active with this workshop and returns to Chicago frequently to help keep his parents’ dream alive. -more- Funding provided by MASTERPIECE January 2014 TCA Biographies, Page 2 Kate Brooke Executive Producer and Lead Writer, Mr. Selfridge, Season 2 Kate Brooke wrote four episodes for the debut season of Mr. Selfridge and is now back as lead writer, executive producer, and showrunner, taking the characters into the crisis of World War I. “One of the reasons why I particularly enjoy writing Mr. Selfridge is the unique combination of fact and fiction,” she says. MASTERPIECE viewers know her work fromThe Forsyte Saga II of a decade ago, in which she had the challenge of adding spark to a story that was a cult series in the 1960s. More recently, Kate has written for the British thriller serials Ice Cream Girls, Case Sensitive, and Wired, all for ITV. Also for ITV, she wrote the single dramas Joanne Lees: Murder in the Outback, Danielle Cable: Eyewitness, and The Making of a Lady, which will air on PBS in February, as well as Breaking the Mould for the BBC. Before writing for television, Kate spent ten years writing and directing for theatre. Her adaptations include Graham Greene’s The Tenth Man, Francois Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux, and Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. Kate Lewis Executive Producer, Mr. Selfridge, Season 2 Kate Lewis’s collaboration with Mr. Selfridge creator/writer Andrew Davies dates to MASTERPIECE’s lush period dramas The Way We Live Now and Daniel Deronda, for which she served as script editor. Kate also worked on the pilot for The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, beloved to MYSTERY! fans. She graduated to the producer’s chair for a series of critically acclaimed programs on the BBC: The Alan Clark Diaries, starring John Hurt; the award-winning musical drama Blackpool, starring David Morrissey, David Tennant, and Sarah Parish; and an adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize- winning novel, The Line Of Beauty, starring Hayley Atwell and Dan Stevens. Kate moved to ITV Studios in 2008 and has been Executive Producer on the first two seasons ofVera , a popular detective series starring Brenda Blethyn as an obsessive crime solver, and ITV's supernatural hit Marchlands and its sequel, Lightfields. In addition to executive producing Mr. Selfridge, Kate is working on her own development slate. Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock, Season 3 Called history’s greatest Holmes by Vogue and People Magazine, Benedict Cumberbatch has won a dossier full of other praise for his brilliant portrayal of the master detective, including Emmy® and Golden Globe® nominations, two BAFTA nominations, and a Critic’s Choice Award for Best Actor. Benedict’s MASTERPIECE debut was in To the Ends of the Earth, adapted from William Golding’s ripping sea yarn. Also on MASTERPIECE, he starred in The Last Enemy, winning a Golden Nymph Award for Best Actor at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, and he starred in Small Island, for which he earned a BAFTA nomination. He recently appeared on the big screen in The Fifth Estate, in which he plays WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; the historical drama 12 Years a Slave; and August: Osage County, with Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Ewan McGregor. His other recent roles include an Emmy®-nominated performance in Parade’s End, produced by the BBC and HBO; arch villain Khan in the film Star Trek Into Darkness; Smaug the dragon in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, in which he also intones the voice of Necromancer; tireless mole hunter Peter Guillam in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; and cavalry commander Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. Other acclaimed roles include legendary physicist Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking, for which he was a Golden Nymph winner and a BAFTA nominee; rapist Paul Marshall in Atonement; and Frankenstein and the Creature in the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, for which he and Jonny Lee Miller shared the Best Actor prize at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Last fall Benedict was named British Actor of the Year at the BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards for his “masterful performances in television, film, and theatre." -more- MASTERPIECE January 2014 TCA Biographies, Page 3 Steven Moffat Executive Producer, Co-Creator of Sherlock and Co-Writer of "The Sign of Three" and Writer of "His Last Vow" In 2009 Steven succeeded Russell T Davies as the Showrunner of Doctor Who. Under Davies' tenure, Steven won a BAFTA for his episode "Blink", and has since won a total of four Hugo awards including the 2011 Best Dramatic Presentation award for "The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang". Since then, he has overseen the development and growth of one of the BBC's most popular prime-time shows. Steven began his writing career in the late 1980's with ITV series Press Gang, whose second series won a BAFTA. Steven went on to write the sitcoms Joking Apart, Chalk and the hugely popular, award winning Coupling. In 2007 he wrote Jekyll, an update of the classic novella, and in 2010 he co-created the multi-award-winning Sherlock with his friend and fellow writer, Mark Gatiss, for Hartswood Films. In 2012 Steven was presented with the RTS Judges Award for his "outstanding contribution to Television" and was honoured by the British Academy for Film and Television with a Special Award for contribution to television. Steven recently wrote the much anticipated Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special , shot in 3D, which was premiered to a record global audience across 94 countries on television and in cinemas and the Doctor Who Christmas Special, introducing Peter Capaldi as the new Time Lord. The third series of Sherlock recently launched on the BBC with its highest ever ratings, and with consolidated figures it is the highest rated non-Doctor Who drama in the UK since 2002. Sue Vertue Producer and Board Director of Hartswood Films Sue began her producing career at Tiger Aspect in 1991 with Mr. Bean. She went on to Produce Emmy® Award-winner The Vicar of Dibley, Hospital (which was the opening night comedy for Channel 5 and a winner at Banff), and The Last Englishman which was a Bafta-nominated single drama starring Jim Broadbent. She then had an idea for a flat share between a gay man and a straight girl, got Jonathan Harvey on board and they created Gimme, Gimme, Gimme which was frequently top of the BBC2 ratings. In 1998 Sue left Tiger Aspect to produce Comic Relief and then joined Hartswood. She continued to executive produce Gimme with Tiger and for Hartswood also produced four series of the very popular Coupling which was created and written by Steven Moffat, her husband. Sue has produced several more comedies - Fear Stress and Anger, Carrie and Barry, The Savages, Supernova and The Cup, and is the Series Producer for the multi-award-winning hit drama Sherlock for BBC1, which is co-created by Moffat and Mark Gatiss.