Factory Birds
The Fair Maid of the West
The Family Reunion
Lynn Farleigh
George Farquhar
David Farr
Farrah
Nicholas Farrell
Mia Farrow
Fashion
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Faust
Ray Fearon
Michael Feast
Jules Feiffer
Emma Fielding
Joseph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes
Geraldine Fitzgerald
Peter Flannery
James Fleet
Susan Fleetwood
John Fletcher
Flight
The Fool
Footfalls
John Ford
Oliver Ford Davies
The Forest
Emilia Fox
Philip Franks
Paul Freeman
Geoffrey Freshwater
Max Frisch
Frozen Assets
Christopher Fry
Athol Fugard
After student roles at Oxford University, including Timon of Athens (Oxford Playhouse), Philip Franks worked at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, played Romeo at Coventry, and appeared in Doug Lucie's Heroes (New End). For most of the 1980s he worked at the RSC: Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Ron Daniels, RST, 1981, Barbican, 1982); Bassanius in Titus Andronicus, Outlaw in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (John Barton, RST, 1981); Dumaine in All's Well That End's Well (Trevor Nunn, RST, 1981); Prince Humphrey of Gloucester in Henry IV (Nunn, Barbican, 1982); Florizel in The Winter's Tale (Ronald Eyre, Barbican, 1982); Bertram, succeeding Mike Gwilym, in Nunn's All's Well (Barbican, 1982, Broadway, 1983); John in Peter Pan (Nunn/John Caird, Barbican, 1982, 1984); Matthew in Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (Caird, Swan, 1986, Mermaid, 1987); Fielding in Nick Dear's The Art of Success (Adrian Noble, TOP, 1986, Pit, 1987); Gaston in World's Apart (Nick Hamm, TOP, 1986, Pit, 1987); Tikhon in Ostrovsky's The Storm (Hamm, Pit, 1987); and, for the 1987 Small-scale Tour, First Merchant in The Comedy of Errors (Hamm) and, surprisingly, the title role in Hamlet (Roger Michell). Elsewhere, he played Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra (Robin Phillips, Chichester, 1985), and Claudio in the Alan Bates/Felicity Kendall Much Ado About Nothing (Elijah Moshinsky, Strand Theatre, 1989).
During the early 1990s Franks acted in popular television dramas—most prominently The Darling Buds of May (ITV, 1991-93), but also The Buddha of Suburbia (Roger Michell, BBC, 1993), and Martin Chuzzlewit (BBC, 1995), as Tom Pinch. In 1998 he began a four-year stretch in the Sunday night soap Heartbeat (ITV). Since his return to live performing he has played Lloyd Dallas in Michael Frayn's Noises Off (Jeremy Sams, NT Piccadilly, 2003), and Alan Turing in Breaking the Code (Philip Wilson, Theatre Royal, Northampton, 2003, Zoë Waites as Pat Green). He has worked more often on the other side of the footlights, directing Juliet Stevenson and Simon Russell Beale in The Duchess of Malfi (Greenwich Theatre and Wyndham's, 1995); Michael Maloney and Zoë Waites in an admired Hamlet (Greenwich Theatre and Tour, 1996); T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (Lyceum Theatre Company, Edinburgh Festival, 1997); Juliet Stevenson and Anton Lesser in Noël Coward's Private Lives (NT Lyttelton, 1999); Zoë Waites in The White Devil (Lyric, Hammersmith, 2000); and Patrick Stewart in Twelfth Night (Chichester, 2007).
Other television credits: To Serve Them All My Days (BBC, 1980); Bleak House (BBC, 1985); Strange (BBC, 2002); and Midsomer Murders (ITV, 2003).
Education: Oxford University
RSC: Joined 1981
Seasons: 1981 (Strat.)-82/83 (Lond./New York); 1984 (Lond.); 1986 (Strat)-87 (Lond.); 1988 (Small-scale Tour)
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