Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Stuart Bailey (born 25 April 1988) is an English actor.

Known for his comedic, dramatic, and musical roles on stage and screen, he is the recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award.

Bailey began his career as a child actor in Royal Shakespeare Company productions and by eight was performing as Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables.

Jonathan Stuart Bailey was born on 25 April 1988 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, the son of a mother who worked as an audiologist and a father who was a managing director for Rowse Honey.

He grew up in nearby Benson and Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, and has three older sisters.

He described his upbringing as a "co-operative of four brilliant women and a dad who has an incredible work ethic".

He decided that he wanted to be an actor at the age of five after his grandmother took him to see a production of Oliver! in London.

His first ever appearance on stage was in a primary school production of Noah's Ark, playing a raindrop.

Bailey attended the local Church of England-affiliated Benson Primary School, then The Oratory School while taking ballet lessons.

He later had a music scholarship to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where he played the piano and clarinet.

After securing a talent agent at 15 years old and booking acting roles, he eventually declined his university acceptance offer and opted not to go to drama school, later saying that this kept him grounded in the performing arts: "I've never gone in as the overdog, and that's liberating and I don't want that to ever change. I just want to allow my own experiences to come through."

Through his dance club in Henley-on-Thames, Bailey auditioned for and landed the alternating roles of Tiny Tim and Young Scrooge in the 1995 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of A Christmas Carol at the Barbican Theatre in London at seven years old.

He sang "Where is Love?" from Oliver! for his audition.

The following year, he made his television debut in the Victorian period drama Bramwell.

Bailey also played Little Baptiste in the RSC's 1996 production of Les Enfants du Paradis.

By eight years old, he was performing as Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables.

In 2001, Bailey played Prince Arthur for the RSC's King John.

He made his feature film debut in 2004 in Five Children and It, a film adaptation of E. Nesbit's fantasy novel of the same name.

In 2006, on the day of his last A levels, he started rehearsing for a revival of the play Beautiful Thing in London, taking over the lead role from Andrew Garfield.

The Telegraph wrote that Bailey "memorably lit up" the production.

This was followed by guest roles in long-running British television staples like Doctors and The Bill.

His first leading role on television was in the 2009 BBC sitcom Off the Hook about a group of university freshers.

On screen, Bailey starred in the action-adventure series Leonardo (2011–2012) and the musical-comedy Groove High (2012–2013) before becoming known for his roles in the crime drama Broadchurch (2013–2015), the satire W1A (2014–2017), and the comedy Crashing (2016).

In 2011, Bailey played the titular Leonardo da Vinci in the 2011 CBBC action-adventure series Leonardo, which follows a young Leonardo and his friends in 15th century Florence.

The show ran for two series, spawned an online game, and received four KidScreen Awards.

The same year, he starred in the comedy Campus, a semi-improvised sitcom in which he played Flatpack, a student athlete with Olympic potential.

Bailey was nominated for Outstanding Newcomer at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his performance in David Hare's well-received play South Downs at Minerva Theatre in 2011, and its later transfer to Harold Pinter Theatre the following year.

The Telegraph described him as a future star and one of "the brightest up-and-coming actors currently starring on the West End stage."

He has since starred in contemporary plays such as South Downs in 2012, The York Realist in 2018, and Cock in 2022; in classical plays like the Royal National Theatre's Othello in 2013 and Chichester Festival Theatre's King Lear in 2017; as well as in musicals, namely the London revival of The Last Five Years in 2016 and the West End gender-swapped revival of Company for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical in 2019.

He also led the Disney Channel musical-comedy Groove High playing the popstar Tom which ran from 2012 to 2013 for 26 episodes and was a mixture of live action and animation where Bailey sang and also did the voiceover of his character's animated form.

In 2013, Bailey rose to popularity for playing the local journalist Olly Stevens in the first two series of the hit crime-drama Broadchurch on ITV.

On stage, he was cast by then Royal National Theatre's artistic director Nicholas Hytner as Cassio in his production of William Shakespeare's Othello at the Olivier Theatre in 2013.

The production was shown to cinemas via National Theatre Live.

His "likable, open-faced", and "smoothly ambitious" Cassio was "splendid", per The Washington Post.

Hytner also directed Bailey in one of the vignettes for National Theatre Live: 50 Years On Stage where he played Valentine Coverly from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

Bailey originated the role of Tim Price in Duncan Sheik's musical American Psycho directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida Theatre.

He then guest starred in the Doctor Who episode "Time Heist" in 2014.

The episode was described by The Independent as "a fast-paced caper" with Bailey stealing the show with his compelling performance as augmented human Psi.

He gained international recognition for his portrayal of Anthony, Viscount Bridgerton, in the Regency romance series Bridgerton (2020–present).

Bailey has since starred in the romantic drama miniseries Fellow Travelers (2023), for which he won a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor.