(Photo: Getty Images)
Happy birthday Simon Callow! The prolific actor celebrates his 73rd birthday today (June 15), so we're celebrating with 10 reasons we appreciate him.
1. His career began in a genuinely amazing way.
As a teenager in the 1960s, Callow was a regular visitor to London's National Theatre, which had recently been founded by Sir Laurence Olivier. Callow became so fascinated by the world of acting that he decided to do something about it – and it paid off. "I took it upon myself to write to Laurence Olivier," he told Hot Press, "and amazingly, he replied by Return of Post, saying ‘Well, if you like it so much, why don’t you come and work here in the box office?’ And it was amazing, such a wonderful experience, and I met actors for the first time in my life, and that was the moment."
2. He's a two-time Doctor Who guest star.
Callow portrayed Charles Dickens in the 2005 episode "The Unquiet Dead" and again in the 2011 episode "The Wedding of River Song." In a 2005 interview with the BBC, Dickens said that Mark Gatiss' script had compelled him to accept the role. "I get sent a lot of scripts which feature [Dickens] as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books," Callow recalled. "But, as well as being brilliantly written, Mark's script was obviously the work of someone who knows exactly what Dickens is all about."
3. He appeared in the classic British rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral.
In Richard Curtis' much-loved 1994 movie, Callow plays Gareth, the character who – spoiler alert – supplies the titular funeral. In the video interview below, Callow talks proudly about why he feels Gareth was a such a groundbreaking character.

4. He has appeared in two movies that won Best Picture at the Oscars.
In 1984's Amadeus, Callow plays the German composer and dramatist Emanuel Schikaneder. And in 1998's Shakespeare in Love, he portrays Edmund Tylney, a courtier who was responsible for drama censorship in Elizabethan England.

5. He's a prolific writer.
Callow has written no fewer than 12 books, including biographies of Dickens, Richard Wagner, actor Charles Laughton, and Hollywood legend Orson Welles. You can hear him talk about Welles, about whom he's written three volumes of biography, in this lecture from the BFI (British Film Institute).

6. He's also a Shakespeare aficionado.
Between 2010 and 2014, Callow performed the one-man show Being Shakespeare at theaters in London and all over the U.K., then in Chicago and New York as well. As he explains below, he didn't portray Shakespeare "as such," but instead evoked some of his most famous characters "to give a sense of who Shakespeare is."

7. He's also a director.
Over the years, Callow has directed numerous stage plays and operas, as well as one film: an adaptation of Carson McCullers' Southern Gothic novella The Ballad of the Sad Café. Released in 1992, it starred Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine, and was nominated for the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

8. He was among the first well-known British actors to come out as gay.
Callow spoke candidly about his sexuality in his 1984 book Being An Actor. "I'm not really an activist," he told The Independent in 2004, "although I am aware that there are some political acts one can do that actually make a difference, and I think my coming out as a gay man was probably one of the most valuable things I've done in my life. I don't think any actor had done so voluntarily, and I think it helped to change the culture."
9. He also served as a sounding board when Sir Ian McKellen was considering whether to come out.
Callow spoke about their conversation quite graciously during an interview on the Out to Lunch with Jay Rayner podcast. “So Ian says to me one day in Los Angeles, ‘Look, do you think I should come out?,'" Callow recalled. "And I said, ‘It’s very hard for me to answer that question because my coming out was a much easier thing because, in terms of career, I'm a character actor, and you're of course a romantic leading actor.'"
Callow continued:  "And he said, 'Of course, that has been my anxiety.' But he said a young woman had just come up to him in Los Angeles and said, 'I think you're gorgeous,' and he said 'You do know I'm gay, don't you?' and she said, 'That doesn't stop you from being gorgeous.' I think that really lodged itself in his brain. I used to say I was John the Baptist to his Jesus as far as coming out was concerned. I was merely a forerunner."
10. And finally, he's charmingly self-deprecating.
During an entertaining Guardian interview with Sir Derek Jacobi last year, the topic of miscasting came up. "I was rather extraordinarily cast as Orlando in As You Like It at the National Theatre in 1979," Callow recalled. "People expect Orlando to be this gorgeous thing. I made the mistake of listening to the radio review of the production in my dressing room. I remember hearing [theater critic] Michael Billington say to [radio presenter] Stanley Wells: 'And what about Simon Callow?' And Stanley Wells saying: 'Well, lacking in glamour surely!'"
Do you have a favorite Simon Callow moment?