Stephen was born in Portsmouth, England, moved to Singapore for most of his
baby years and then returned to Portsmouth and grew up there. At 19 years old,
having failed to become a Policeman, he decided to become an Actor and went to
Drama School in London at The Arts Educational Schools. After 3 years training
he left and began his professional career, the first job touring in children’s
theatre, this led on to his 1st film role as Moose in the cult film “My Beautiful
Laundrette”.
After a few years working in Theatre, Commercials and supporting roles on TV he
joined the cast of fledgling comedy “Birds of a Feather” as Dave, the lover of
Sharon (Pauline Quirke). He was only in 2 episodes but made such an impact with
the fans that he was bought back for the third series. “The Glam Metal
Detectives” for the Comic Strip then followed this; it was a sketch show and
Stephen played literally hundreds of characters.
A year of mainly commercials introduced him to director Peter Chelsom when
they worked together on a commercial for Shake ‘n’ Vac, Peter cast him right
away as Gordon in “Hear my Song” opposite Ned Beatty. Then there was a couple
of years getting great guest roles on British TV, in the likes of “The Hot Dog
Wars”, “Our Friends in the North” opposite Malcolm McDowell, “Dangerfield” and
“Kavanagh QC”
His movie career was moving alongside this at quite a pace with roles opposite
Timothy Dalton in “The Beautician and the Beast”, Robert Englund in “The Killer
Tongue” a Spanish movie and Richard Harris in “Savage Hearts” (Stephen and
Richard became good friends on this and Richard will be sadly missed).
In 1996 Stephen’s agent set up a meeting on a small low budget movie with an
unknown director named Guy Ritchie, Guy offered Stephen the role of Nick the
Greek in his movie “Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels”. 3 years later the film
was released and became the biggest British movie in the last 20 years and
launched the careers of Nick Moran, Vinnie Jones, Guy Ritchie, Jason Statham,
and Mathew Vaughn.
This film led on to more movies and America started knocking on his door. Alan
Parker had him do a small role in “Angela’s Ashes”, Philip Kaufman came calling
to play Bouchon in “Quills” alongside Kate Winslett, Michael Caine, Joaquin
Phoenix and Geoffrey Rush. Richard Eyre called on him twice, for “Iris” opposite
Judy Dench and soon to be released “Complete Female Stage Beauty” with Clare
Danes.
In 1992 Stephen has did a TV series for the USA and Canada called “Starhunter
2300” in which he played Rudolpho, it was shot in Toronto, Canada. He also
played the co-lead in a BBC series “Cavegirl” which shot for 6 months in the
mountains of South Africa.
The role of Ted Ray in “The Greatest Game Ever Played” came directly from
director Bill Paxton, Bill had seen his work and called Stephen’s agent and then
called Stephen from his car phone and offered him the role without an audition.
“I am loving the role and working in Montreal, and my golf game has improved
immensely.”
Stephen recently filmed an adaption of Terry Prachett's Discworld book
"Hogfather", which will be screened at Xmas 2006 on Sky One. More recently he
has done 2 episodes of "Casualty" and is currently filming "Kingdom" with
Stephen Fry. In August he will begin filming on "Carry on London" alongside
Vinnie Jones and Burt Reynolds.
