In 2016, he starred opposite Samantha Barks in the London production of The Last Five Years with music, lyrics and direction by Jason Robert Brown at The Other Palace. In 2013, Bailey joined his first musical theatre production playing Tim Price in Duncan Sheik's sold-out London run of American Psycho directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida Theatre. In 2012, 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 and its later transfer to Harold Pinter Theatre. On the day of his last A levels, he started rehearsing for a production of a Beautiful Thing in London, taking over a role from Andrew Garfield. Bailey considers his role as Prince Arthur for the Royal Shakespeare Company's King John in 2003 as his first adult role. By eight, he was performing as Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables. He also played Little Baptiste in the company's 1996 production of Les Enfants du Paradis.
Through a dance club in Henley-on-Thames of which he was a member, he auditioned for and landed the role of Tiny Tim in the 1995 Royal Shakespeare Company's production of A Christmas Carol at the Barbican Theatre in London at seven years old. I just want to allow my own experiences to come through.” Career Theatre He deferred his university admission and did not go to drama school after getting acting roles, later saying that this has kept him grounded in the industry: “I’ve never gone in as the overdog, and that’s liberating and I don’t want that to ever change.
He attended The Oratory School in Woodcote while taking ballet lessons, and later studied at Magdalen College School, Oxford under a music scholarship playing the piano and clarinet. He decided that he wanted to be an actor at the age of five after his grandmother took him to see a production of Lionel Bart's Oliver! in London. His mother worked as an audiologist and his father was a former Rowse Honey managing director. In 2020, he began playing, to critical acclaim, Lord Anthony Bridgerton, a viscount and head of the eponymous family in the Netflix period drama Bridgerton, through which he gained international recognition.īorn in the Oxfordshire village of Benson, Bailey is the youngest of four children and the only boy.
He has since starred in the play South Downs for which he was nominated at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards as Outstanding Newcomer in 2012, the Royal National Theatre's Othello in 2013 where he played Cassio, the Off West End revival of musical The Last Five Years in 2016, the West End revival of The York Realist in 2018, 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, and the West End revival of Cock in 2022.īailey's screen work includes the CBBC adventure series Leonardo (2011–12), ITV crime drama Broadchurch (2013–15), BBC Two sitcom W1A (2014–17), and Channel 4 comedy Crashing (2016). Known for his comedic and dramatic roles on stage and screen, he is the recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award as well as nominations for Evening Standard Theatre and Screen Actor Guild Awards.īailey began his career as a child actor in Royal Shakespeare Company productions when he was seven years old, and by eight was performing as Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables. Jonathan Stuart Bailey (born 25 April 1988) is an English actor. Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical (2019)