Actor Hugh Dancy is a familiar face on TV and movie screens. But his accent doesn’t give away the fact that he was born in Stoke-on-Trent. The 46-year-old, who is married to Hollywood star Claire Danes, will soon be seen on the big screen in Downton Abbey: A New Era, which will be released in the UK on Friday, April 29.

Known for roles in Ella Enchanted, Confessions of a Shopaholic and the NBC series Hannibal, in his latest release Hugh will play a director who has come to Downton Abbey to shoot a new film. He’ll be starring alongside fan favourites like Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary Talbot.

We’ve had a look back at Hugh’s life from his birth in Stoke-on-Trent and upbringing in Newcastle to his marriage to film and TV star Claire Danes.

READ: Test your North Staffordshire knowledge with these 30 nostalgia questions

Childhood

Hugh was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1975 while his academic father Jonathan Dancy was working at Keele University. He was there for 26 years from 1970 onwards, as lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and eventually professor of philosophy, and is currently professor of philosophy of the University of Texas at Austin.

His mother Sarah, worked in academic publishing and Hugh has a younger brother and sister, Jack and Katharine. He attended Edenhurst Preparatory School in the Westlands between the ages of five and 10, when he became a boarder at the Dragon School in Oxford.

At 13, he moved to the world-famous elite public school Winchester College. He acted in the Winchester College Players’ production of Twelfth Night at 18 before going on to study English at St Peter’s College in Oxford.

In a 2009 interview for his film Confessions of a Shopaholic, Hugh was asked how New York compares to his North Staffordshire birthplace. He said: “It’s not a comparison that I have heard made many times, either in Staffordshire or the Big Apple.

“You can’t ask for two more different worlds. It’s weird for a boy from Stoke-on-Trent, and then from Newcastle – that’s where I lived from the age of five. I do actually stop and think that’s a long way – just geographically that’s a long way – to go.”

Acting career

Apart from his appearance in the soon-to-be-released new Downton Abbey movie, Hugh can also currently be seen on screen, in America at least, in the latest series of Law and Order, playing an assistant district attorney.

He’s also well known for big screen appearances in Ella Enchanted, Confessions of a Shopaholic, King Arthur and The Jane Austen Book Club, and TV roles in Hannibal, The Path and as the lead in the BBC’s production of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. When he was starting out as an actor, he had small roles in numerous hit shows of the 1990s, such as Cold Feet, Kavanagh QC and Dangerfield.

He met his wife, Claire Danes, when they starred together in the 2007 film Evening, and he has also appeared in six episodes of her smash hit show Homeland.

Personal life

After meeting on the set of Evening, Hugh and Claire got together after filming had ended and got married in France in a private ceremony in 2009. The couple have two sons – Cyrus, born in 2012, and Rowan, born in 2018. The family live in New York City.

Claire rose to fame in the mid-1990s as Angela in cult TV series My So-Called Life, and went on to star in films including Romeo + Juliet, Stardust, Les Miserables and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But in recent times, she has been best known for her role as CIA agent Carrie Mathison in the long-running series Homeland.

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