Roger Allam honoured with Outstanding Alumni Award
18 Dec 2014
Multi-talented actor returns to campus
Actor Roger Allam returned to campus to receive an Outstanding Alumni Award.
Roger has been in a wide range of theatre, TV and film productions and is best known for his roles in The Thick of It and Endeavour.
The award presentation – Professor Jeremy Gregory and conferred by the Alumni Advisory Board on behalf of the Alumni Association – was followed by a dynamic question and answer session.
Roger said: “To receive the award was an honour, and a great surprise.”
Roger Allam (Drama, 1975) is one of the UK’s most acclaimed and versatile actors. A regular on stage and screen for almost forty years, his theatrical journey began as a young boy in London, seeing a school production of The Birthday Party and watching Sir Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre at the Old Vic.
Originally destined for a choral scholarship at Cambridge, Roger failed his A-levels but it turned out to be a fortuitous failure. Cambridge’s loss was Manchester’s gain. He re-took his exams and headed north to pursue a BA in Drama here at the Manchester.
Manchester, Roger recalled, was one of the few universities to offer a Drama degree in 1972.
He enjoyed the city’s vigour and energy and enjoyed living, studying – and later working – in the north. He has especially fond memories of the Stephen Joseph Studio at the University, where he and his fellow students staged a production each week.
In 1981, he won a coveted place with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he remains an Associate Artist.
“Multi-talented and disarmingly modest, Roger excels on stage, film and TV and enjoys all three in different ways, from tragedy to comedy,” Jeremy said.
He created the role of Javert in the evergreen musical Les Miserables, which he played for nearly a year at The Barbican and in the West End. He starred alongside Oscar-winning Dame Helen Mirren as private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. And he became a household name as Peter Mannion MP in the BBC TV comedy The Thick of It, and as DI Fred Thursday in Endeavour for ITV.
He returned to Manchester to shoot a BBC drama about the Birmingham Six in 1990, and more recently performed with the Halle Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall.
In a fitting tribute to the theatrical giant who sparked his schoolboy interest in acting, Roger has been nominated for six different Laurence Olivier Awards. He has won three times, including one as best actor for his role as Falstaff in the two Henry IV plays at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Jeremy added: “Olivier, I’m sure, would have approved.”