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Ben Miller

Ben Miller has built a screen career around the meeting point between comic precision and straight-faced authority. Born in London on 24 February 1966, the English actor and comedian took an unusually scientific route into performance: he studied Natural Sciences at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, then began work toward a PhD in solid-state physics before leaving the thesis behind for comedy. At Cambridge, Miller joined the Footlights, later moving to London and meeting Alexander Armstrong in 1992. Their partnership developed through live performance and the Edinburgh Fringe before reaching television with Armstrong and Miller, which ran from 1997 to 2001. The duo subsequently returned for three series of The Armstrong & Miller Show, alongside radio work. Those sketch-comedy foundations helped establish Miller’s particular strength: playing intelligence, confidence and exasperation while allowing the joke to emerge from the character’s absolute seriousness. His film work includes The Parole Officer, The Prince and Me and What We Did on Our Holiday. He also played Bough, the dependable sidekick to Rowan Atkinson’s accident-prone agent, in Johnny English and returned to the role for Johnny English Strikes Again. On television, Miller starred alongside Sarah Alexander in The Worst Week of My Life and played James Lester in the science-fiction drama Primeval. From 2011 until the opening of the third series in 2014, he led Death in Paradise as Detective Inspector Richard Poole, a role well suited to his ability to make irritation both credible and funny. Miller’s range extends beyond acting. He made his film-directing debut with Huge in 2010, has worked as a screenwriter, producer and television director, and has written books exploring science as well as children’s fiction. Stage appearances include The Ladykillers and the political satire The Duck House, while his voice work includes the ITV Digital and PG Tips Monkey. Across sketch comedy, mysteries, science fiction and family entertainment, Miller brings the disciplined timing of a comedian and the curiosity of someone who once planned to make physics his life.