Jacobi, Derek George

Jacobi, Derek George (1938– ), highly regarded English actor, who had some experience with the National Youth Theatre and at Cambridge before making his professional début at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 1960–3. After a season at Chichester he joined the National Theatre company, 1963–71, making his London début as Laertes in Hamlet and appearing in such roles as Cassio in Othello in 1964 and Tusenbach in Chekhov's Three Sisters in 1967. In 1972 he joined the Prospect Theatre Company, playing the title-roles in Chekhov's Ivanov in 1972 and in Pericles in 1973, and repeating for the same company in 1975 his Chichester performance as Rakitin in Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Again for Prospect, in 1977 and 1979 he gave an acclaimed performance as Hamlet, later seen at Elsinore and on a world tour, and in 1978 he was seen as Thomas Mendip in a revival of Fry's The Lady's not for Burning. For the RSC he played Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing, the title-role in Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and Prospero in The Tempest (all 1982), and the title-role in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac in 1983; in 1984 he took his Benedick and Cyrano to New York. After a highly acclaimed performance in Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code (1986; NY, 1987) he returned to Shakespeare in Richard II (1988) and Richard III (1989), ultimately playing them in repertory.