British actor Ben Miles probably caught your notice as bounder Montague Dartie in The Forsyte Saga, Sir Timothy Midwinter in Lark Rise to Candleford, and/or Princess Margaret’s love interest Peter Townsend in The Crown. He’ll soon be playing military advisor Armand de Caulaincourt in Napoleon, so I thought it was time to look back on his frock flicks resume.
FYI, he’s had bit parts in a number of productions for which I can’t find photos, including: The Life and Crimes of William Palmer, The Wings of the Dove, A Merry War, The Affair of the Necklace, The Catcher Was a Spy.
José Rivas in Zorro (1990-91)
Angus Cotton in The Round Tower (1998)
Montague Dartie in The Forsyte Saga (2002-03)
Parson Maybold in Under the Greenwood Tree (2005)
Sir Timothy Midwinter in Lark Rise to Candleford (2008)
Percival Fortescue in Marple: A Pocketful of Rye (2008)
Dr. Stapleton in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2011)
Browning in Dracula (2013-14)
Duke of Somerset in The Hollow Crown: Henry VI pt 1 & 2 (2016)
Peter Townsend in The Crown (2016-22)
Major Harry Markham in The Last Post (2017)
John Profumo in The Trial of Christine Keeler (2018-20)
Are you a fan of Ben Miles?
Oh my goodness yes, the Profumo affair really did happen. Funny, the real guy seems better looking than Ben. Usually happens the other way around.
I liked him as Sir Timothy and in The Crown.
The stage production of Wolf Hall! I felt his preformance as Cromwell matched the book far better than Mark Rylance.
If you saw Scandal with Joanne Whalley and John Hurt, that was about the Profumo Affair (although more from Christine Keeler’s point of view). :)
Ben Miles is so talented and also classically handsome. I think I first noticed him in The Crown then later realized I’d seen him in other things. He did a good job in The Crown, but neither he nor Vanessa Kirby could get around being too old to play those roles (same for the always hot Matthew Goode who was too old play the guy she ended up marrying). Re Dracula: It was, unfortunately, one of those Dracula retellings where the fresh take on the story is actually interesting, but the execution and/or casting was on the spectrum from not good to horrible. (As a Dracula fan, it is such a disappointment when that happens!) Ben Miles did a good job in his role, though. And because I was a boy-crazy adolescent with no life in the early 90s, I can say that the blurry shot from Zorro is more than likely of Juan Diego Botto who played the hot young thing in the Zorro household. (Sigh. And, he’s still hot.) Such an interesting MCM choice!!! :)
The chemistry between him and Vanessa Kirby in the Crown was incredible. In the scene where he wept because he would never see Princess Margaret was heartbreaking.
I really didn’t like The Forsyte Saga and can’t remember his character at all. I could never understand why so in love with Irene.
The actress for Irene was terribly miscast. So wooden, there was no reason to understand why every man kept falling all over themselves for her at all.