Early life

Strong was born in Islington, London, the son of an Austrian mother and an Italian father. His father left the family soon after his birth, and Strong was brought up by his mother, who worked as an au pair. Strong said in an interview, "The home I grew up in was a flat in Myddelton Square in London's Islington, a beautiful Georgian square with a huge church in the middle. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I remember flats in Walthamstow, Clapton, Stoke Newington, and Edmonton, as well." His English name is not a stage name; when he was a child, his mother changed his name by deed poll to help him fit in with his peers. He was baptised a Catholic.

Strong attended Wymondham College, where he sang in the punk bands the Electric Hoax and Private Party (the name of the latter was based on the idea that the band's shows would not be attended, due to prospective audiences thinking that the event was a "private party"). His original ambition was to become a lawyer, but after studying German law at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich for one year, he returned home to London and studied English and Drama at Royal Holloway, and later attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Career

Strong is a familiar face on British television. He appeared in two Prime Suspect serials for ITV as Inspector (later Detective Chief Superintendent) Larry Hall, in Prime Suspect 3 (1993) and Prime Suspect 6 (2003). He also had starring roles in two BBC Two drama serials, Our Friends in the North (1996) and The Long Firm (2004), for which he earned a BAFTA nomination. He also played the villainous Colonel Brand in Sharpe's Mission (1996). Strong portrayed the romantic lead, Mr. Knightley, in the 1996 ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Emma. He then played the role of Steve in the 1997 film adaptation of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, opposite Colin Firth.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Strong appeared in Heartlands and in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Donmar Warehouse, for which he was nominated for the 2003 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role. He was later featured in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005), played Mussawi in the film Syriana (2005), and played an assassin named Sorter in Revolver (2005). Strong portrayed the traitorous Wictred in Tristan & Isolde, showing his talent with swordplay, and since 2006, he has provided the narration in the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.

In 2007, Strong was one of the final two actors considered for the part of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men; despite the persistence of rumours, he claims he was never offered the part. Strong was Pinbacker, the insane captain of Icarus I, the first ship that was sent to reignite the Sun in Sunshine (2007). Pinbacker was inspired by the character of Sergeant Pinback from Dark Star. The character's disfiguring burns were influenced by the injuries suffered by F1 driver Niki Lauda. Also in 2007, Strong portrayed Prince Septimus, the youngest of the seven Stormhold princes, in Stardust.

In 2008, he played Nick Calderelli in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Mannie Miesel in Flashbacks of a Fool, Finn in Babylon A.D., Archy in RocknRolla, and Philipp Bouhler in Good. Also in 2008, he portrayed Hani Salaam, the Jordanian intelligence chief and director of the feared GID in Body of Lies, marking his first collaboration with English director Ridley Scott. Strong's performance as Hani Salaam earned him a nomination for the London Critics Circle Film Award for Best British Supporting Actor and his performance was mentioned by several critics, with Scott calling it "a marvel of exotic suavity and cool insinuation" while Ebert "particularly admired" his aura of suave control. The following year, he played a lead part in the Channel 4 film Endgame, and he played Lord Blackwood, the main villain, in Sherlock Holmes, who has somehow returned after his execution with a plot to take over the British Empire using an arsenal of dark arts and new technologies. The film marked his third time working with director Guy Ritchie. He went on to work with Ridley Scott for a second time in the 2010 epic adventure film Robin Hood, portraying the antagonist Sir Godfrey. The same year, he played Frank D'Amico, the head of a criminal organisation, in Kick-Ass. Strong says he is drawn to playing the antagonist. He tries to "understand the purpose of the character", and then work on building a believable individual.

In 2011, he played Thaal Sinestro, Green Lantern and Hal Jordan's mentor, in the superhero film Green Lantern. Strong said the film "closely follows the early comics. Sinestro starts out as Hal Jordan's mentor, slightly suspicious and not sure of him because obviously Hal is the first human being who's made into a Green Lantern. He's certainly very strict and certainly unsure of the wisdom of Hal becoming a Green Lantern." Strong went on to state that the character "is a military guy but isn't immediately bad. It's the kind of person he is that lends himself to becoming bad over the course of the comics being written, but initially he's quite a heroic figure." He also revealed that the outfit and other aspects of the character very closely follow the character's early days. Also in 2011, he was the voice Pod of The Secret World of Arrietty and the voice of the character Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter in the video game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. The same year, and most notably, he played the role of Jim Prideaux in the remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was earlier played by Ian Bannen in the iconic original 1979 BBC series starring Alec Guinness. The film premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2011.

Strong then played Clive Cornell in The Guard (2011), which is the most successful independent Irish film of all time in terms of Irish box-office receipts, overtaking The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). He next portrayed the role of Jacob Sternwood in the British thriller Welcome to the Punch. He played Matai Shang, the leader of the Therns in John Carter (2012), and starred in Kathryn Bigelow's action thriller film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) alongside Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, and Joel Edgerton. The film had its premiere in Los Angeles on 19 December 2012 and had its wide release on 11 January 2013. The film received wide critical acclaim and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In November 2012, Strong and Taissa Farmiga were cast as the lead characters John Washington and Anna Greene in Mindscape, produced by Jaume Collet-Serra, the feature-length directorial debut of Jorge Dorado. The film centres on a man with the ability to enter people's memories who begins working on the case of a brilliant but problematic teenager to determine whether she is a sociopath or the victim of trauma. The film came to American cinemas in June 2014. Jaguar Cars produced an advertisement in 2014, initially shown during Super Bowl XLVIII and later online and on television, featuring Strong alongside fellow British actors Ben Kingsley and Tom Hiddleston. It was themed around their recent film roles as villains, and used the tagline "It's good to be bad". That same year, Strong co-starred in the historical drama film The Imitation Game, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, in which he played MI6 chief Stewart Menzies.

In 2015, Strong won the Olivier Award for Best Actor for his role in A View from the Bridge, which he starred in as Eddie Carbone at the Young Vic. When Strong went over to perform the play on Broadway in New York, he received similar levels of acclaim, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, and the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, for his performance. In 2016, he starred in the spy action comedy Grimsby, about a British black-ops spy (Strong) whose idiotic brother (Sacha Baron Cohen) is an English football hooligan.

Personal life

Strong lives in London with his wife, Liza Marshall, and their two sons, Gabriel and Roman. In an interview, he said he is content living a relatively normal life in London, saying, "I've got no desire to live anywhere else. I was born here, my wife was born here, my kids were born here and this is where we're going to stay. I feel like I have a lovely balance. I'm able to keep my head below the parapet. I get on with my work, I have a family and I get on the tube. It just so happens that I'm doing this job."

Strong speaks fluent German and some Italian. He is a longtime friend of actor Daniel Craig, his co-star in Our Friends in the North, who is the godfather of Strong's oldest son. He dubbed Craig's voice over in German when "German with an English accent" was required for Obsession (1997).

In an interview, Strong said that his style icon is David Bowie, and when he was a child he wanted to be the French actor Alain Delon. He said, "I remember watching him in films and though I couldn't understand a word he was saying I remember thinking he looked great. Failing that, an astronaut, after watching the moon landing on a tiny, portable, black-and-white TV at my gran's house." Strong was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men in 2015. Like his character in Fever Pitch, he supports Arsenal FC.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	Century	Policeman
1994	Captives	Kenny
1997	Fever Pitch	Steve
1998	The Man with Rain in His Shoes	Dave Summers
1999	Elephant Juice	Frank
1999	Sunshine	István Sors
2001	To End All Wars	Dusty Miller
2001	Hotel	Ferdinand
2001	The Martins	Doug
2001	Superstition	Antonio Gabrieli
2002	Fields of Gold	Dr. Tolkin
2002	Heartlands	Ian
2003	Some Place Safe	Dad	Short film
2003	It's All About Love	Arthur
2005	Revolver	Sorter
2005	Oliver Twist	Toby Crackit
2005	Syriana	Mussawi
2006	Tristan & Isolde	Lord Wictred
2006	Scenes of a Sexual Nature	Louis
2007	Sunshine	Pinbacker
2007	Stardust	Prince Septimus
2008	Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day	Nick Calderelli
2008	Flashbacks of a Fool	Mannie Miesel
2008	Babylon A.D.	Finn
2008	RocknRolla	Archy
2008	Body of Lies	Hani Salaam
2008	Good	Philipp Bouhler
2009	Endgame	Dr. Niel Barnard
2009	The Young Victoria	Sir John Conroy
2009	Sherlock Holmes	Lord Henry Blackwood
2010	Kick-Ass	Frank D'Amico
2010	Robin Hood	Sir Godfrey
2010	The Way Back	Khabarov
2011	The Guard	Clive Cornell
2011	The Eagle	Guern
2011	Green Lantern	Thaal Sinestro
2011	The Secret World of Arrietty	Pod (voice)	United Kingdom dub
2011	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Jim Prideaux
2011	Black Gold	Sultan Amar
2012	John Carter	Matai Shang
2012	Zero Dark Thirty	George
2013	Welcome to the Punch	Jacob Sternwood
2013	Justin and the Knights of Valour	Heraclio (voice)
2013	Blood	Robert Seymour
2014	Unity	Narrator (voice)	Documentary
2014	Closer to the Moon	Max Rosenthal
2014	Before I Go to Sleep	Dr. Nasch
2014	Mindscape	John Washington
2014	The Imitation Game	Stewart Menzies
2014	Kingsman: The Secret Service	Merlin
2016	Grimsby	Agent Sebastian Graves
2016	Approaching the Unknown	Captain William Stanaforth	In post-production
2017	Miss Sloane	Rodolfo Schmidt	In post-production
2017	Kingsman: The Golden Circle	Merlin	In production

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1989	After Henry	Roger	Episode: "Wedding Bells"
1990	The Bill	P.C. Gibb	Episode: "A Clean Division"
1990	Inspector Morse	P.C. Mike Butterworth	Episode: "Masonic Mysteries"
1990	TECX	Eberhard Braun	Episode: "A Question of Chemistry"
1991	One Against the Wind	German Soldier	Television film
1993	The Buddha of Surburbia	Second TV Producer	Miniseries; 1 episode
1993	Prime Suspect 3	Inspector Larry Hall	Miniseries; 2 episodes
1994	Between the Lines	David Lacey	Episode: "A Face in the Crowd"
1996	Emma	George Knightley	Television film
1996	Our Friends in the North	Terry "Tosker" Cox	Miniseries; 9 episodes
1996	Sharpe's Mission	Colonel Brand	Television film
1997	Band of Gold	Ed Smithson	3 episodes
1998	Spoonface Steinberg	Father	Television film
1999	Trust	Michael Mitcham	Television film
1999	Births, Marriages and Deaths	Terry	4 episodes
1999	In the Name of Love	Chris Monroe	Television film
2000	Bomber	Colonel Chris Forsyth	Television film
2000	Anna Karenina	Stiva Oblonsky	Miniseries; 4 episodes
2002	Falling Apart	Pete	Television film
2003	Henry VIII	Duke of Norfolk	Television film
2003	Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness	Det. Chief Supt. Larry Hall	Miniseries; 1 episode
2004	The Long Firm	Harry Starks	Miniseries; 4 episodes
2005	Walk Away and I Stumble	Andy Spader	Television film
2006	Low Winter Sun	Det. Sgt. Frank Agnew	Miniseries; 2 episodes
2006-12	Who Do You Think You Are?	Narrator (voice)	70 episodes
2013	The Great Martian War 1913-1917	Narrator (voice)	Documentary
2013	Low Winter Sun	Det. Sgt. Frank Agnew	10 episodes

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010	Kick-Ass: The Game	Frank D'Amico (voice)
2011	Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine	Captain Titus (voice)
2013	Total War: Rome II	Silanus (voice)
2016	Squadron 42
2016	Eisenhorn: Xenos	Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn (voice)

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Work	Result
2004	British Academy Television Award for Best Actor	The Long Firm	Nominated
2008	London Film Critics Circle Award for Best British Supporting Actor	Body of Lies	Nominated
2009	MTV Movie Award for Best Fight	Sherlock Holmes (with Robert Downey, Jr.)	Nominated
2010		Kick-Ass (with Chloë Grace Moretz)	Nominated
2011	Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Won
	Georgia Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast		Won
	YouMovie Award for Best Cast		Won
2014	Gopo Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role	Closer to the Moon	Nominated
	Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture	The Imitation Game	Nominated
	San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by an Ensemble		Nominated
	Palm Springs International Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble		Won

[ Source: Wikipedia ]