ROGER REES was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom, on May 5, 1944, and grew up in South London. He wanted to be an artist. He was at a pretty rough school, and the only thing he was good at—and the thing that saved him—was art. He was accepted into the prestigious Camberwell College of Art and studied to be a painter. He sketched so well that he was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art, one of the world’s preeminent art schools.
When his father died, Roger left the Slade and painted scenery to support his mother and his brother. He was painting scenery at Wimbledon Theatre when Arthur Lane, that theater’s actor/manager, needed a young man to be in a play—and suddenly Roger became an actor. He played the lead, and he wasn’t nervous. He learned to be nervous later. Meanwhile, he appeared in Agatha Christie plays, A Christmas Carol (which began his lifelong passion for Dickens), seasonal pantomimes, even as the front half of a dancing cow.
1n 1966, he auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company and was sent away because his voice wasn’t very good. He moved north to Scotland, and became a stage manager at the Pitlochry Theatre Festival. One of the young actors in the troupe fell ill and Roger replaced him onstage, playing parts like Yasha, the manservant, in The Cherry Orchard—which began his lifelong passion for Chekhov.
A year later he auditioned again for the RSC and was accepted. His first role was as a nonspeaking hunstman in The Taming of the Shrew—thus beginning his lifelong passion for Shakespeare. He worked his way up over the course of twenty-two years with the company, playing roles including Graziano in Merchant of Venice, Roderigo in Othello, Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, and eventually became one of Trevor Nunn’s leading actors—playing Antipholus in The Comedy of Errors, Semyon in The Suicide, Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Hamlet. His most famous role for the RSC is the title role he created in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Roger won the Olivier Award in London, the Tony Award in New York, plus an Emmy nomination for Best Actor for the role of Nicholas Nickleby. Roger remained an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company for the rest of his life.
In London, Roger created the starring roles of Henry and Kerner, both opposite Felicity Kendal, in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and Hapgood, and played opposite Jane Lapotaire in his own thriller, Double Double, which was coauthored with Rick Elice.
In 2010, Roger returned to London to play Vladimir opposite Ian McKellen’s Estragon in the critically acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. The production toured throughout Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
On and off-Broadway, Roger Rees appeared in London Assurance with Donald Sinden; Nicholas Nickleby; Indiscretions with Kathleen Turner, Eileen Atkins, Cynthia Nixon, and Jude Law (Tony, Drama Desk nominations); John Robin Baitz’s The End of the Day (Obie Award); Uncle Vanya with Derek Jacobi and Laura Linney; The Uneasy Chair with Dana Ivey; The Rehearsal with David Threlfall and Frances Conroy; The Misanthrope opposite Uma Thurman; the world premiere of the Terrence McNally/Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty musical, A Man of No Importance with Faith Prince, Steven Pasquale, and Sally Murphy; as Gomez opposite the Morticias of Bebe Neuwirth and Brooke Shields in The Addams Family; and as Arthur Winslow in The Winslow Boy with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Alessandro Nivola.
Some of his films are The Ebony Tower (opposite Laurence Olivier), Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Bob Fosse’s Star 80, Julie Taymor’s Frida, Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, Peter Greenaway’s A Life in Suitcases, and Richard Squires’s Crazy Like a Fox, opposite Mary McDonnell.
Known to television audiences as Lord John Marbury on The West Wing and Robin Colcord on Cheers, Roger also played Dr. Colin Marlow in Grey’s Anatomy and has appeared in Oz, My So-Called Life, MANTIS, Warehouse 13, The Good Wife, Elementary, and such television movies as The Crossing, Double Platinum, Titanic, and Liberty. On Thanksgiving 2015, he was seen on PBS in his final film role in Ric Burns’s documentary, The Pilgrims.
From 1986–88, Roger served as associate artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic where he directed, among others, Julius Caesar, Turkey Time, and John Bull.
In America, Roger directed Red Memories (New York Stage and Film); Mud, River Stone (Playwrights Horizons); The Merry Wives of Windsor; Love’s Labour’s Lost and Dog and Pony (Old Globe); Arms and the Man (Roundabout); and an episode of HBO’s Oz. Roger, for three very happy years (2005–2007), was the artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where he directed The Rivals, Robbie Baitz’s The Film Society, Simon Grey’s The Late Middle Classes, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, Herringbone (starring B. D. Wong), and Double Double (with Matt Letscher and Jennifer Van Dyck). He also directed The Taming of the Shrew, in which he played Petruchio opposite Bebe Neuwirth’s Katherine.
With the much-loved Collegiate Chorale (now Master Voices) at Lincoln Center, Roger directed Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, Philip Glass’s Juniper Tree, George Gershwin’s White House Cantata, and Kurt Weill’s Firebrand of Florence. He conceived and directed Here Lies Jenny starring Bebe Neuwirth, with choreography by Ann Reinking, which ran successfully in New York and San Francisco.
In 2011, Roger and Alex Timbers teamed to direct Peter and the Starcatcher by Rick Elice, which is based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, at the New York Theatre Workshop. They won the Obie Award for Outstanding Direction. In 2012, the play opened on Broadway, garnering more Tony nominations (nine) than any new American play in the history of the Tony Awards, including one for Best Direction of a Play. The production won five awards. Their production played on and off-Broadway for two years and enjoyed a successful national tour starting in 2013.
A year after the premiere of Starcatcher, in the fall of 2012, Roger took his one-man show, What You Will—devoted to his life and adventures with William Shakespeare—to London’s West End. The show, which Roger toured throughout the United States, premiered in 2006 at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. In the summer of 2014, Roger starred opposite Chita Rivera in the Terrence McNally/John Kander/Fred Ebb musical The Visit, directed by John Doyle and choreographed by Graciela Daniele. On April 23, 2015, The Visit opened on Broadway. It was Roger’s last show.
On November 16, 2015, Roger was posthumously inducted into The American Theater Hall of Fame.
In 1982, Roger met Rick Elice. They were together as a couple ever since, and married legally in 2011.