Dominic Mafham Biography

Dominic Byron Mafham (born 11 March 1968 in Stafford, Staffordshire) is an English stage, film and television actor. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Career

Mafham began his career at The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1990. He was with the RSC for four years.

Mafham first came to prominence when he played Nigel Hawthorne's emotionally damaged son Daniel Pascoe in Paula Milne's The Fragile Heart. The drama was screened on Channel 4 in the UK in 1996. It won the 1997 BAFTA award for Nigel Hawthorne as Best Actor, and was nominated for several awards including Best Drama Serial. It was also nominated in the Royal Television Society awards that year.

Mafham played the central character - a high tech assassin in the Swiss Alps stricken with a conscience - in Duncan Jones first film Whistle. The film gathered a cult following after showing at various international film festivals, but finally gained a larger audience when it was included on the DVD of Jones' first full-length feature Moon.

Mafham played Mortimer Lightwood in the BBC's 1998 adaptation of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Much of the story is seen from Mortimer's perspective. Our Mutual Friend was acclaimed worldwide, and won four BAFTA's including Best Serial. It was nominated for four more as well as awards from the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild and The San Francisco International Film Festival.

Since then, Mafham has appeared in more than 50 productions, including the films The English Patient and Shooting Fish; the ITV medical drama Always and Everyone (A&E); the killer in the first episode of Foyle's War; Kingdom (as Stephen Fry's errant brother Simon Kingdom); the BBC World War Two drama Land Girls as Dr Richard Channing; two episodes of Lewis; and The Clinic.

Most recent television work includes the opening episode of the second series of the BBC drama The Musketeers, playing General De Foix, an old Musketeer; an episode of the BBC series New Tricks, playing a Tory minister suspected of murder; and Humans on Channel 4 & AMC playing recurring character Chief Superintendent Shaw.

Most recent feature films include:

Dr Wangel in Heart of Lightness, a film directed by Jan Varden set in Arctic Norway based on Henrik Ibsen's play The Lady From The Sea. Sir Horsa in Dragonheart, Druid's Curse, the third in Universal Studios Dragonheart series of films, directed by Colin Teague; and Guy 'Bullet Face' Bidwell in Sniper: Legacy, a Sony Pictures film with Tom Berenger and Dennis Haysbert, directed by Don Michael Paul. Mafham returns as Bidwell in the next instalment of the Sniper film series due to be released in 2016.

In February 2016 he appeared in the BBC TV series Father Brown as Sir Malcolm Braithwaite episode 4.6 "The Rod of Asclepius"

The Clinic

The Clinic was a multi award winning prime time Sunday night drama for RT in Ireland. It has been sold all over the world. It ran for seven series from 2003-2009, regularly gathering an audience share of over 40%. The show was widely praised in the media. Mafham played the womanising, scheming and manipulative English plastic surgeon Dan Woodhouse. He appeared in every episode.

Theatre and other work

Mafham appeared as a celebrity chef in the television series The Restaurant. His menu earned him four out of five stars. In February 2010, Mafham guest presented The Afternoon Show, RT television's flagship daytime show. Mafham has been the voice of the World Vision UK television campaign for several years, and is a widely used voice over artiste. He has recorded several books for Audible.

From February 2011 Mafham played Osborne, to critical acclaim, in the 2011 National Tour of David Grindley"?s award winning production of RC Sherriff"?s Journey's End. The production transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in July 2011.

In October 2011 Mafham took part in the new Bush Theatre"?s inaugural event "?66 Books"?, in a two handed play by Jack Thorne based on the book of Daniel.

On 6 June 2014 Mafham took part in the BBC Radio 2 D Day 70th Anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert was broadcast live on Radio 2 and at over 150 cinemas across the UK. The event was presented by Dermot O'Leary, Jeremy Vine and Louise Minchin. Sir Patrick Stewart read Churchill.

In spring 2015 Mafham played Antonio in The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Jonathan Pryce played Shylock. The production is being revived for a major tour later in 2016, visiting New York, Washington and Chicago in the U.S. and several cities in China before returning to Shakespeare's Globe in October.

Mafham appeared in the play Linda, written by Penelope Skinner and directed by Michael Longhurst, which opened on 26 November 2015 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, as Neil, the husband of Linda, played by Noma Dumezweni who replaced Kim Cattrall after she left the production in the final week of rehearsals, citing "doctors orders".

Radio

Mafham has appeared in several radio plays including the BBC Millennium Shakespeare production of Hamlet, playing Laertes. He played 'Ethan Frome' in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel of the same name; Hugh Cazalet in the mammoth serialisation of Elizabeth Jane Howard's wartime saga 'The Cazalets'; the Duke of Buckingham in the dramatisations of the Stuarts, and most recently Geoffrey Marshall, a factory owner in Tyneside, in the Radio 4 series Home Front.

He has also contributed to the Radio 3 programme 'Words and Music'.

Doctor Who

Mafham appeared in the Big Finish audio Companion Chronicle adventure The Jigsaw War which was a two hander with Frazer Hines. He featured in the fourth Doctor adventures with Tom Baker - The Dalek Contract and The Final Phase, released in June and July 2013.

Awards and nominations

• Irish Film and Television Awards (2009) Nomination - Best Actor in a Leading Role "?The Clinic'
• Broadway World Awards (2011) Nomination - Best Actor in a Featured Role "?Journey"?s End'

InSite Films

In 2011 Mafham set up the production company "?InSite Films"?, which produces a range of video content including music videos, promotional films and documentaries.