Tim Roth

Tim Roth is an English actor and a key figure in the Brit Pack. He earned a BAFTA Award and received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. After early television work in Made in Britain and Meantime, he was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer for his first film, The Hit. He went on to appear in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Vincent & Theo, and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

Roth worked with Quentin Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, and The Hateful Eight. His performance in Rob Roy won him a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor and brought Oscar and Golden Globe nominations in the same category. His other film roles include The Legend of 1900, Planet of the Apes, Funny Games, Selma, Luce, and Bergman Island.

He made his directorial debut with The War Zone in 1999. On television, he played Cal Lightman on Lie to Me, Jim Worth and Jack Devlin on Tin Star, and Emil Blonsky, also known as Abomination, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe across The Incredible Hulk, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and the series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

Born Timothy Simon Roth in Dulwich, London, on 14 May 1961, his mother Ann was a painter and teacher, and his father Ernie was a journalist and painter. His father, originally from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and of Irish descent, changed his surname from Smith to Roth in the 1940s as an act of anti-Nazi solidarity. Roth’s father was a World War II veteran. Roth has said he was sexually abused by his paternal grandfather from childhood into his early teens; he first spoke about it during press for The War Zone and later identified the abuser in a 2016 interview.

He attended school in Lambeth, then Croydon Technical School after being bullied, and later the Strand School in Tulse Hill. He initially wanted to be a sculptor and studied at Camberwell College of Arts.

In the 1980s, Roth appeared in TV films including Made in Britain, Meantime, and Murder with Mirrors. After The Hit, he won an Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer. He played an East End character in the BBC drama King of the Ghetto. Alongside Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Bruce Payne, and Paul McGann, he was part of the Brit Pack. In 1990, he played Vincent van Gogh in Vincent & Theo and Guildenstern in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

His international breakthrough came through collaborations with Tarantino. After Rob Roy, he appeared in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, The Legend of 1900, and Gridlock’d with Tupac Shakur. He directed The War Zone, based on Alexander Stuart’s novel. In 2001, he played the evil chimpanzee General Thade in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. He turned down the role of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films.

He starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, and played Emil Blonsky in The Incredible Hulk. Roth appeared in the TV series Lie to Me as a body language expert, and in the documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth. His image was used on the cover of the Manic Street Preachers’ album Postcards from a Young Man. In 2012, he served as president of the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes. He played Sepp Blatter in United Passions, and Oswaldo Mobray in The Hateful Eight. A deleted scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood featured him as a butler.

He starred in the 2015 film Chronic, earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Male Lead, and later worked again with director Michel Franco on Sundown and as an executive producer on April’s Daughter. In 2017, he appeared in five episodes of Twin Peaks and starred in the crime drama Tin Star. He reprised his role as Abomination in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.