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Steven Berkoff

Steven Berkoff has spent his career moving between acting, writing and directing, with theatre at the centre of it all. Born Leslie Steven Berks in Stepney on 3 August 1937, he trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and later studied physical theatre and mime at Jacques Lecoq’s school. That combination of classical training and physical performance helps explain the forceful, highly controlled presence he brings to both stage and screen. Berkoff’s theatre work is not a sideline to his acting career but its driving force. His early plays included adaptations of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and The Trial, followed by verse plays such as East, Greek, Decadence and West. He has also worked extensively as a theatre director and performer, including the solo production Shakespeare’s Villains and his two-monologue show One Man. In 1994, he directed and appeared in the film adaptation of Decadence. For movie audiences, Berkoff is especially associated with antagonists: Soviet General Orlov in Octopussy, corrupt art dealer Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II and gangster George Cornell in The Krays. These roles made good use of his sharp delivery and imposing theatricality. Berkoff has said that he finds playing evil characters flattering and that the best actors take on villainous parts. His screen career is broader than those memorable heavies suggest. He appeared as a police officer in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and as a gambler aristocrat in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Later roles included attorney Dirch Frode in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, while his television work has ranged from War and Remembrance and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Doctor Who and The Borgias. Berkoff has said that he accepted Hollywood roles to subsidise his theatre work, a revealing summary of a career in which screen acting and self-created stage work have remained closely connected.