David Suchet has received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for services to drama and charity in a career spanning 50 years.
Best-known for his performance as Hercule Poirot in the long-running Agatha Christie detective series, Suchet recently appeared in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, as the voice of the daemon, Kaisa.
Born in London in 1946, he joined the National Youth Theatre at the age of 16 and later trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda).
As a struggling actor, Suchet was working at formal menswear specialists Moss Bros in Covent Garden.
He was about to apply for a full-time position as a junior manager when he received a call from his agent, telling him he had a job – a non-speaking role in the 1973 series The Protectors as “a terrorist who gets blown up”. The role demanded a day’s filming in Venice.
“I said ‘Yes’ at once and never went to that interview,” Suchet told The Telegraph last year.
He began his career as a full-time actor that same year, working at the Watermill theatre in Bagnor, Berkshire, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He landed his first TV speaking role in The Mating Machine in 1970 before going on to play Edward Teller in a mini-series about the Manhattan Project.
After portraying Sigmund Freud in the BBC mini-series Freud in 1984, Suchet was cast as the lead in Agatha Christie’s Poirot on ITV in 1989.
Suchet’s performance as the moustachioed detective – widely considered to be the definitive interpretation of the Belgian super sleuth – received international acclaim and attracted 700 million viewers. He continued to play the role in 70 episodes until 2013.
He was awarded a CBE in 2011 for services to drama.
On stage, Suchet appeared opposite Dame Diana Rigg in the West End production, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in 1996. He played Salieri from 1998 to 2000 in a Broadway production of Amadeus.
As well as His Dark Materials, Suchet most recently appeared in two other BBC dramas: Press, and Doctor Who – the latter in which he played The Landlord in the 2017 episode “Knock Knock”.
However, it is his performance as Poirot with which Suchet will forever be associated, a fact he admitted in last year’s Telegraph interview.
“Every day someone will come up and talk to me about Poirot,” he said. “People adore Poirot. He fascinates and inspires them – I think because he’s on the good side.”
The 74-year-old said the letters he receives from fans to this day are “extraordinary” – “people say they watched it in hospital and it made them feel better. People who have got divorced said it got them through dark times.”
“I feel very grateful,” he said. “Poirot will be there until I die.”
Additional reporting by Press Association
