Michael Pennington

Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington (born 7 June 1943) is a British director and actor who, together with director Michael Bogdanov, founded the English Shakespeare Company. Although primarily a stage actor, he is best known to wider audiences for his role as Moff Jerjerrod, ill-fated commanding officer of the Death Star in the film Return of the Jedi.

Pennington was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Euphemia Willock (née Fyfe) and Vivian Maynard Cecil Pennington. Most of his career has been on stage in works such as Hamlet (RSC), Oedipus the King, The Entertainer, and The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. In 1986, Pennington and director Michael Bogdanov together founded the English Shakespeare Company. As joint artistic director, he starred in the company's inaugural productions of The Henrys and, in 1987, the seven-play history cycle of The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide. He has directed plays including Twelfth Night at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the United States. A notable TV appearance was on the television movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the late 1987. He appeared in the 2005 film Fragile, co-starring Calista Flockhart. He is the author of the book Are You There, Crocodile? which combines biographical material about the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov with a narration of Pennington's efforts to write a one-man play about Chekhov; the book also includes the full text of...
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