Orlando Seale

Dashing British stage and screen performer Orlando Seale came of age in London as the son of an art gallery owner, and trained dramatically at several esteemed institutions, including Paris' Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique and London's L'École Philippe Gaulier, after completing his undergraduate studies at Oxford University's St. Peter's College. An extremely versatile performer, Seale harbored and cultivated ambitions that lay outside the realm of traditional drama, and studied such diverse modes of expression as playwriting, vocal performance, fencing, dancing, and clown work. Seale spent a year with the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company, and indeed landed one of his first screen assignments in a Shakespeare production: Kenneth Branagh's over-scaled, four-hour cinematization of Hamlet (1996) -- albeit as an understudy/stuntman for lead (and fellow RSC vet) Branagh.

Seale's next major movie role arrived three years later, with a small supporting turn in Tim Burton's gothic fable Sleepy Hollow (1999); the exposure from that appearance helped to net Seale more substantial work, and he spent the next several years juggling a heavy slate of assignments that exhibited laudable diversity. Among other accomplishments, he evoked Albert Einstein in The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells (2001), rocker Joe Elliott in Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story (2001), and Darcy in Andrew Black's Mormon-themed Jane Austen update, Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003). After delving into American television with guest roles on Monk and The West Wing, and eking out a small role in Emilio Estevez's period ensemble drama Bobby (2006), Seale played an elf in David Dobkin's holiday comedy Fred Claus (2007) and starred opposite Heather Graham and Mia Kirshner in the romantic comedy Miss Conception (2008).

~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide