A knight of British theater, Sir Nigel Hawthorne became immensely popular as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Machiavellian civil servant of the series 'Yes Minister' and 'Yes, Prime Minister', a role that brought him several BAFTA Awards. A classically trained actor of exquisite verbal precision, he shone in the cinema with 'The Madness of King George', which earned him his only Academy Award nomination and another BAFTA. His career spanned both the comedy of political intrigue and Shakespearean and contemporary drama, always with impeccable diction and razor-sharp comic timing. He died in 2001, leaving the portrait of a performer capable of hiding emotion behind the most British irony and restraint. Read more