After Dinner Speakers: John Hannah, Justin Toper, Tim Rice

John Hannah was born April 23, 1962 in East Kilbride, Scotland, U.K. John is the youngest of three children - he has two older sisters. He attended Claremont High School in East Kilbride and went on to an apprenticeship as an electrician. In East Kilbride, he participated in the East Kilbride Rep Theatre Club. At the suggestion of a co-worker, he ended his apprenticeship and attended the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. After graduation, he had some small parts in theater productions, films, and television, then broke into the "big-time" with his appearance as Matthew in FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (this is the role many people still connect him with). Since his breakthrough role in FOUR WEDDINGS, he has played a wide range of roles including a psychopathic killer (TRUTH OR DARE), a mystery-solving pathologist ("McCALLUM"), a "karaoke-mad" dead-beat dad (THE JAMES GANG), drunken, thieving comic relief (THE MUMMY) and a Monty Python-quoting romantic comedy love interest (SLIDING DOORS). For more information about John Hannah's various roles, please visit the filmography. John was married on 20 January 1996 to actress Joanna Roth. The pair met several years before during a stage production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. In many of his interviews, John mentions sweet or humorous stories from their relationship, such as the visit to London's Sri Siam restaurant where he proposed to her in writing on the tablecloth. For years, John has made an effort to use his status as a celebrity for something more than getting a good table in a restaurant. Soon after his role as the epileptic police officer Franky Drinkall in "OUT OF THE BLUE", he showed his support for the Epilepsy Association of Scotland. He was, for a long time, a spokesman for Oxfam's Cut Conflict Campaign On December 24, 1997, John Hannah and Scottish Films producer Murray Ferguson established a production company called Clerkenwell Films. So far, John's role in the company seems to be to "make the teas and get the buns in for the meetings" but we may see him in a more active production role in the future. Clerkenwell's first big production is the REBUS series, including BLACK AND BLUE and THE HANGING GARDEN.