Frost/Nixon Character Card #5 Matthew Macfadyen as John Birt

The film opens in selected cities 12/5 and 12/12 with a nationwide release on Christmas Day. For more information visit, http://www.frostnixon.net/

Macfadyen was tasked to play John Birt, the founding editor of London Weekend Television's (LWT) Weekend World and onetime director general of the BBC.  A powerful figure in British television for more than three decades, he would go on to become special advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001.  Birt co-produced the Frost/Nixon interviews with Frost and organized the team that prepared the program's host for battle.

"John Birt was a producer at the time for LWT," says Macfadyen, who met the real Birt for lunch prior to filming, as well as at the end of the shoot when Birt visited the Los Angeles set.  "He'd worked with David Frost before, very happily and successfully, and Frost sort of poached him from this company for whom he'd just gone to work.  Birt was actually my age, 32, at the time of the interviews, but he was already an incredibly successful producer."     

Matthew Macfadyen (John Birt) was most recently seen starring in the dark comedy Death at a Funderal, directed by Frank Oz and also starring Rupert Graves. He previously finished filming Incendiary, with Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor in a contemporary drama about the emotional aftermath of a suicide bombing in London.

Earlier last year, Macfadyen returned to the stage in The Pain and the Itch at The Royal Court Theatre, directed by Dominic Cooke. On television, he has recently been seen in the Channel 4 drama Secret Life in which he received outstanding reviews as a convicted pedophile newly released from prison.

In 2005, Macfadyen won critical acclaim for the lead role of Mr. Darcy in Joe Wright's Oscar-nominated adaptation of 'Pride & Prejudice.' The Working Title film also starred Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland. In the same year, he was nominated as Best Actor at the British Actor at the British Independent Film Awards for his role as a disillusioned war journalist in In My Father's Den, directed by Brad McGann.

Macfadyen's other film credits include Middletown with Daniel Mays and Eva Birthistle; The Reckoning with Tom Hardy; Michael Apted's Enigma also starring Kate Winslet and Tom Hollander; and Maybe Baby directed by Ben Elton.

He is well known on British television for his role as Tom in the second series of Spooks, starring alongside David Oyelowo. He also starred in the role of Paul Tibbenham in The Project directed by Peter Kosminsky, and as Sir Felix Carbury in The Way We Live Now directed by David Yates. Other UK television credits include Perfect Strangers, Bloodline, Warriors and Wuthering Heights.

Macfadyen has appeared on stage in such prestigious productions as Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Battle Royal for The National Theatre/Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford; The School for Scandal at the Barbican; the West End staging of Much Ado About Nothing The Duchess of Malfi on both the West End and Broadway; and A Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC.

The film opens in selected cities 12/5 and 12/12 with a nationwide release on Christmas Day. 

For more information visit, http://www.frostnixon.net/    

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