Jonathan Hartman

Jonathan trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Los Angeles, where he learned not only how to identify with the soul of a tree, but to be a cup of hot coffee as well. Then he went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and learned how to act. Fellow students included Daniel Day-Lewis, Miranda Richardson, Greta Scacchi, Samantha (Miss Moneypenny) Bond, and several other luminaries who wouldn't remember him either.Beginning his professional career in Canada by playing the lead in Equus, Jonathan received an Equity card, his first stage kiss, and a visit from the police who were vetting the nude scene. He claimed asylum as a cultural refugee in Britain shortly thereafter. West End appearances include seven months with Charlton Heston and Ben Cross in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and The Jungle Book with Fenella Fielding and the late Jeremy Sinden. Rep appearances include Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (Hornchurch), Nobbs the Boxer in Curse of the Baskervilles (Plymouth Theatre Royal), and a National Trust Tour of Loves Labour's Lost, in which he played the Lord Dumaine.A stint in Canada saw him flouncing about as dress designer Bobbi Franklyn in Ray Cooney's Run For Your Wife, the homicidal Earl of Douglas in Henry IV (Manitoba Theatre Centre), and the title role in The Dresser. Back in London, a particular favorite was playing Sir Robert Walpole in The Art of Success at the Arcola.In 1995, to celebrate the Royal Shakespeare Company's constancy in ignoring his tenth annual request to audition, Jonathan willed them his skull to guarantee himself the perpetual, albeit posthumous role of Yorick in Hamlet. The subsequent international media interest ensured that the RSC casting department now ignores him pointedly rather than passively. Jonathan's DeWalt Powerdrill advert, in which he plays a gay skinhead, crops up occasionally on Chris Tarrant's The Greatest Commercials Never Shown. He has led the Boston Tea Party for a BBC documentary, played a rogue Soviet General for a Eurofighter promo, an incinerated Luftwaffe pilot in Miramax's 'Below', an intergalactic drug dealer in TekWars, (directed by William 'Captain Kirk' Shatner), appeared on BBC Radio 4, and is also the Voice of the "Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker"!!Having very recently arrived in America with his shiny new Green Card, Jonathan's next ambition is to join the CIA, having perfected the art of working for years in the public eye whilst still managing to maintain an almost terminal anonymity. Show less «