Biography
Oliver Robert Ford Davies OBE (born 12 August 1939) is an English actor, writer, theatre historian, director and playwright. He was born in Ealing, Middlesex, and read history at Merton College, Oxford, where he served as president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. After obtaining a DPhil and lecturing in history at the University of Edinburgh, he began his professional acting career in 1967 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
Davies has had a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is known to wider audiences for his film role as Governor Sio Bibble in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005) and as Maester Cressen in the television series Game of Thrones (2011). Other screen credits include Sense and Sensibility (1995), Johnny English (2003), Christopher Robin (2018) and Triangle of Sadness (2022). He received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a New Play in 1990 and was appointed OBE in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to drama. He published the memoir An Actor's Life in 12 Productions in 2022.
