Jonathan Pryce

Actors

Sir Jonathan Pryce CBE (born John Price; June 1, 1947) is a Welsh actor. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began his career as a stage actor in the early 1970s. His work in theatre includes an Olivier Award-winning performance in the title role of the Royal Court Theatre’s Hamlet. On the Broadway stage he earned Tony Awards—the first for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his Broadway debut role in Comedians (1977), the second for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as The Engineer in the musical Miss Saigon (1991).

Pryce’s theatre work led to several supporting roles in film and television. He made his feature film debut in Stuart Rosenberg’s Voyage of the Damned (1976), with Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, and Malcolm McDowell. Other early films include Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), with Jason Robards, Diane Ladd, Royal Dano, and Pam Grier; and Richard Eyer’s The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), with Tim Curry, Charlie Dore, Rosemary Harris, and Frank Finlay.

Pryce’s breakthrough screen performance was in Terry Gilliam‘s satirical dystopian black comedy film Brazil (1985), with Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, Ian Holm, and Jim Broadbent. He also appeared in Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), with John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Charles McKeown, Winston Dennis, Jack Purvis, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Robin Williams, and Valentina Cortese; The Brothers Grimm (2005), with Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Lena Heady, Peter Stormare, and Monica Bellucci; and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), with Adam Driver, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Jason Watkins, and Joana Ribeiro.

Other films in the 1980s include Freddie Francis’s The Doctor and The Devils (1985), with Timothy Dalton, Stephen Rea, Julian Sands, and Twiggy; Haunted Honeymoon (1986), with Gene Wilder (who also directed), Gilda Radner, Dom DeLuise, and Paul L. Smith; Penny Marshall’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986), with Whoopi Goldberg, John Wood, Carol Kane, Annie Potts, Peter Michael Goetz, and Roscoe Lee Browne; Man on Fire (1987), with Scott Glenn, Jade Malle, Joe Pesci, Brooke Adams, Danny Aiello, and Paul Shenar; Consuming Passions (1988), with Vanessa Redgrave, Tyler Butterworth, Freddie Jones, Prunella Scales, Sammi Davis, and Thora Hird; and the Rachel Papers (1989), with Dexter Fletcher, Ione Skye, James Spader, Bill Paterson, Jared Harris, Claire Skinner, Lesley Sharp, and Michael Gambon.

Films in the early 1990s include Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), with Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Kevin Spacey; Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence (1993), with Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Miriam Margolyes, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Gough, Richard E. Grant, Mary Beth Hurt, Robert Sean Leonard, Norman Lloyd, Alec McCowen, and narration by Joanne Woodward; A Business Affair (1994), with Christopher Walken and Carole Bouquet; Deadly Advice (1994), with Jane Horrocks, Brenda Fricker, Imelda Staunton, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw, Hywel Bennett, and John Mills; Great Moments in Aviation (1994), with Redgrave, John Hurt, Dorothy Tutin, and Rakie Ayola; and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Shopping (1994), with Sadie Frost, Jude Law, Sean Pertwee, Marianne Faithfull, and Sean Bean.

Films in the mid to late 1990s include Carrington (1995), with Emma Thompson, Steven, Waddington, Rufus Sewell, Samuel West, and Penelope Wilton; Alan Parker’s Evita (1997), with Madonna, Antonio Banderas, and Jimmy Nail; Regeneration (1997), with James Wilby, Jonny Lee Miller, Stuart Bunce, Tanya Allen, and Neville; Roger Spottiswoode’s Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), with Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Joe Don Baker, and Judi Dench; John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998), with De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Skarsgård, and Bean; Deceit (1999), with Susan Lynch and Claudia Gerini; and Stigmata (1999), with Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, Nia Long, and Rade Šerbedžija.

Films in the early 2000s include The Suicide Club (2000), with David Morrissey, Catherine Siggins, and Paul Bettany; Taliesin Jones (2000), with Ian Bannen, John-Paul Macleod, and Geraldine James; Very Annie Mary (2001), with Rachel Griffiths, Ioan Gruffudd, Matthew Rhys, and Joanna Page; Bruce Beresford’s Bride of the Wind (2001), with Sarah Wynter, Vincent Perez, and Simon Verhoeven; Charles Shyer’s The Affair of the Necklace (2001), with Hilary Swank, Simon Baker, Adrien Brody, Joely Richardson, and Walken; P.J. Hogan’s Unconditional Love (2002), with Kathy Bates, Rupert Everett, Meredith Eaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Lynn Redgrave, and Dan Aykroyd; and What a Girl Wants (2003), with Amanda Bynes,
Colin Firth, Kelly Preston, Eileen Atkins, and Anna Chancellor.

Pryce is also known for his role in Gore Verbinki’s Pirates of the Caribbean films (2003, 2006, 2007), collectively with Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Kevin R. McNally, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Zoe Saldana, Skarsgård, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris, and Chow Yun-fat.

More films in the 2000s include Irwin Winkler’s De-Lovely (2004), with Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, McNally, Sandra Nelson, Allan Corduner, and Peter Polycarpou; Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005), with Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, August Schellenberg, Wes Studi, David Thewlis, and Yorick van Wageningen; Leatherheads (2008), with George Clooney (who also directed), Renée Zellweger, and John Krasinski; Bedtime Stories (2008), with Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Jonathan Morgan Heit, Laura Ann Kesling, Guy Pearce, Aisha Tyler, Russell Brand, Richard Griffiths, Teresa Palmer, Lucy Lawless, and Courteney Cox; Echelon Conspiracy (2009), with Shane West, Edward Burns, Ving Rhames, and Martin Sheen; and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), with Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Dennis Quaid, Rachel Nichols, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ray Park, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christopher Eccleston, Sienna Miller, Byung-hun Lee, and Arnold Vosloo.

Films in the 2010s include Hysteria (2011), with Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Felicity Jones, and Rupert Everett; the long delayed Dark Blood (2012), with Judy Davis, River Phoenix, and Karen Black; G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013), with much of the returning cast along with Luke Bracey, Dwayne Johnson, D. J. Cotrona, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Stevenson, Elodie Yung, and Bruce Willis; Listen Up Philip (2014), with Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Krysten Ritter, and Joséphine de La Baume; The Salvation (2014), with Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eric Cantona, Mikael Persbrandt, Douglas Henshall, and Michael Raymond-James; Woman in Gold (2015), with Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, and Elizabeth McGovern; and Nacropolis (2015), with Elliot Cowan, Élodie Yung, Robert Bathurst, Lenora Crichlow, Harry Lloyd, Nicky Henson, Rufus Wright, and James Callis.

Pryce was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in The Two Popes (2019), with Anthony Hopkins. Other films in the mid to late 2010s include The Healer (2016), with Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Camilla Luddington, Kaitlyn Bernard, and Jorge Garcia; The White King (2017), with Lorenzo Allchurch, Olivia Williams, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Fiona Shaw, and Greta Scacchi; The Ghost and the Whale (2017), with Maurice Benard and Tippi Hedren; The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017), with Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, and Simon Callow; and The Wife (2018), with Glenn Close, Christian Slater, Max Irons, Annie Starke, Harry Lloyd, and Elizabeth McGovern.

Pryce also portrayed The High Sparrow in seasons 5 and 6 of Game of Thrones (2011-2019), with and has also done voice work in the films Freddie as F.R.O.7 (1992), with Ben Kingsley, James Earl Jones, Jenny Agutter, Brian Blessed, Nigel Hawthorne, and Michael Hordern; A Troll in Central Park (1994), with DeLuise, Cloris Leachman, Charles Nelson Reilly, Phillip Glasser, Tawny Sunshine Glover, and Hayley Mills; and the English dub of Renaissance (2006), with Daniel Craig, Catherine McCormack, Romola Garai, and Holm; Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022), with Luke Evans, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, James Cosmo, and Trevor Dion Nicholas.

Early TV movies and miniseries include Stephen Frears’s Daft as a Bush (1975), with Lynn Redgrave, David Daker, and Betsy Blair; The Day Christ Died (1980), with Chris Sarandon, Colin Blakely, Keith Michell, Tim Pigott-Smith, Eleanor Bron, and Hope Lange; Timon of Athens (1981), with Tony Jay; The Caretaker (1981), with Kenneth Cranham and Warren Mitchell; Murder Is Easy (1982), with with Bill Bixby, Lesley-Anne Down, Olivia de Havilland, and Helen Hayes; and Martin Luther, Heretic (1983), with Maurice Denham, Hugh Dickson, John Nettleton, Clive Swift, and Hugh Laurie.

TV movies and miniseries in the 1990s include The Man from the Pru (1990), with Anna Massey and Susannah York; Selling Hitler (1991), with Alexei Sayle, Tom Baker, Alan Bennett, Roger Lloyd-Pack, and Richard Wilson; Danny Boyle’s Mr. Wroe’s Virgins (1993), with Kathy Burke, Minnie Driver, Lia Williams, and Kerry Fox; Barbarians at the Gate (1993), with James Garner, Peter Riegert, Joanna Cassidy, and Fred Dalton Thompson; Thicker Than Water (1993), with Theresa Russell, Robert Pugh, Catherine Neilson, and Richard Lynch; and David (1997), with Nathaniel Parker, Leonard Nimoy, Sheryl Lee, and Ben Daniels.

More TV movies and miniseries include Victoria & Albert (2001), with Victoria Hamilton, Jonathan Firth, and Peter Ustinov; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (2002), with Azura Skye, Stockard Channing, and Matthew Goode; Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars (2007), with Bill Paterson, Anna Chancellor, Michael Maloney, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson; My Zinc Bed (2008), with Paddy Considine and Thurman; Under Milk Wood (2014), with Michael Sheen; Wolf Hall (2015), with Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy, Bernard Hill, Anton Lesser, Mark Gatiss, Mathieu Amalric, and Joanne Whalley; and to Walk Invisible (2016), with Finn Atkins, Rebecca Callard, Charlie Murphy, Adam Nagaitis, and Chloe Pirrie.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

  • The Death of a Young, Young Man (1975) – directed by Viktors Ritelis – TV movie
  • Daft As a Brush (1975) – directed by Stephen Frears – TV movie
  • Play Things (1976) – directed by Stephen Frears – TV movie
  • Voyage of the Damned (1976) – directed by Stuart Rosenberg
  • Spasm (1977) – directed by Michael Mills – TV short
  • For Tea on Sunday (1978) – directed by Don Taylor – TV movie
  • Comedians (1979) – directed by Richard Eyre – TV movie
  • The Day Christ Died (1980) – directed by James Cellan Jones – TV movie
  • Breaking Glass (1980) – directed by Brian Gibson
  • Loophole (1981) – directed by John Quested
  • Timon of Athens (1981) – directed by Jonathan Miller – TV movie
  • The Caretaker (1981) – directed by Kenneth Ives – TV movie
  • Murder Is Easy (1982) – directed by Claude Whatham – TV movie
  • Praying Mantis (1982) – directed by Jack Gold – TV movie
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) – directed by Jack Clayton
  • The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983) a directed by Richard Eyre
  • Martin Luther, Heretic (1983) – directed by Norman Stone – TV movie
  • Brazil (1985) – directed by Terry Gilliam
  • The Doctor and The Devils (1985) – directed by Freddie Francis
  • Haunted Honeymoon (1986) – directed by Gene Wilder
  • Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986) – directed by Penny Marshall
  • Man on Fire (1987) – directed by Élie Chouraqui
  • Consuming Passions (1988) – directed by Giles Foster
  • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) – directed by Terry Gilliam
  • The Rachel Papers (1989) – directed by Damian Harris
  • The Man from the Pru (1990) – directed by Rob Rohrer – TV movie
  • Selling Hitler (1991) – directed by Alastair Reid – miniseries
  • A Child’s Garden of Verses (1992) – directed by Michael Sporn – TV short
  • Freddie as F.R.O.7 (1992) – directed by Jon Acevski
  • Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – directed by James Foley
  • Mr. Wroe’s Virgins (1993) – directed by Danny Boyle – miniseries
  • Barbarians at the Gate (1993) – directed by Glenn Jordan – TV movie
  • Thicker Than Water (1993) – directed by Marc Evans – TV movie
  • The Age of Innocence (1993) – directed by Martin Scorsese
  • A Business Affair (1994) – directed by Charlotte Brandström
  • Deadly Advice (1994) – directed by Mandie Fletcher
  • Great Moments in Aviation (1994) – directed by Beeban Kidron
  • Shopping (1994) – directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
  • A Troll in Central Park (1994) – directed by Don Bluth & Gary Goldman
  • Carrington (1995) – directed by Christopher Hampton
  • Evita (1996) – directed by Alan Parker
  • David (1997) – directed by Robert Markowitz – miniseries
  • Regeneration (1997) – directed by Gillies MacKinnon
  • Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)* – directed by Roger Spottiswoode
  • Ronin (1998) – directed by John Frankenheimer
  • Comic Relief: Doctor Who – The Curse of Fatal Death (1999) – directed by John Henderson – TV short
  • The Book That Wrote Itself (1999) – directed by Liam O Mochain – cameo
  • Deceit (1999) – directed by Claudia Florio
  • Stigmata (1999) – directed by Rupert Wainwright
  • The Suicide Club (2000) – directed by Rachel Samuels
  • Taliesin Jones (2000) – directed by Martin Duffy
  • Very Annie Mary (2001) – directed by Sara Sugarman
  • Victoria & Albert (2001) – directed by John Erman – miniseries
  • Bride of the Wind (2001) – directed by Bruce Beresford
  • The Affair of the Necklace (2001) – directed by Charles Shyer
  • Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (2002) – directed by Gavin Millar – TV movie
  • Unconditional Love (2002) – directed by PJ Hogan
  • Mad Dogs (2002) – directed by Ahmed Alauddin Jamal
  • What a Girl Wants (2003) – directed by Dennie Gordon
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
  • De-Lovely (2004) – directed by Irwin Winkler
  • The Brothers Grimm (2005)* – directed by Terry Gilliam
  • The New World (2005) – directed by Terrence Malick
  • Renaissance (2006) – directed by Christian Volckman – English dub
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
  • Brothers of the Head (2006) – directed by Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe
  • The Moon and the Stars (2007) – directed by John Irvin
  • HR (2007) – directed by Christopher Morahan – TV short
  • Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars (2007) – directed by Julian Kemp – TV movie
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
  • Leatherheads (2008)* – directed by George Clooney
  • My Zinc Bed (2008) – directed by Anthony Page – TV movie
  • Bedtime Stories (2008) – directed by Adam Shankman
  • Echelon Conspiracy (2009) – directed by Greg Marcks
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)* – directed by Stephen Sommer
  • Hysteria (2011) – directed by Tanya Wexler
  • City State (2011) – directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson
  • Dark Blood (2012) – directed by George Sluizer – began production in 1993
  • G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) – directed by John M. Chu
  • Listen Up Philip (2014) – directed by Alex Ross Perry
  • Under Milk Wood (2014) – directed by Pip Broughton – TV movie
  • The Salvation (2014) – directed by Kristian Levring
  • Woman in Gold (2015) – directed by Simon Curtis
  • Wolf Hall (2015) – directed by Peter Kosminsky – miniseries
  • Narcopolis (2015) – directed by Justin Trefgarne
  • Dough (2016) – directed by John Goldschmidt
  • One Last Dance (2016) – directed by Luke Losey – short
  • The Merchant of Venice (2016) – directed by Robin Lough & Jonathan Munby – filmed play
  • The Healer (2016) – directed by Paco Arango
  • Miss Saigon: 25th Anniversary (2016) – directed by Brett Sullivan – filmed play
  • Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters (2016) – directed by Sally Wainwright – TV movie
  • White King (2017) – directed by Alex Helfrecht & Jörg Tittel
  • The Ghost and the Whale (2017) – directed by Anthony & James Gaudioso
  • The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) – directed by Bharat Nalluri
  • The Wife (2018) – directed by Björn L. Runge
  • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)* – directed by Terry Gilliam
  • To Provide All People (2018) – directed by Pip Broughton – TV movie
  • Run (2018) – directed by Alex Lanipekun – short
  • The Two Popes (2019) – directed by Fernando Meirelles
  • Piney: The Lonesome Pine (2019) – directed by Todd Edwards & Timothy Hooten – short
  • Gone Hollywood (2019) – directed by Ted Griffin – TV short
  • Save the Cinema (2022) – directed by Sara Sugarman
  • All the Old Knives (2022) – directed by Janus Metz
  • Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022) – directed by Stephen Donnelly
  • One Life (202-) – directed by James Hawes