Simon Jones (actor)

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Simon Jones
Born July 27, 1950 (1950-07-27) (age 57)
Charlton Park, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom

Simon Jones (born 27 July 1950) is an English actor, most famous for his appearances in the television and radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he played the lead role of Arthur Dent in 1981. Its author, Douglas Adams, later said that he wrote the part of Arthur Dent with Simon Jones in mind.

Jones as Sir Walter Raleigh in the Blackadder episode "Potato"
Jones as Sir Walter Raleigh in the Blackadder episode "Potato"

Jones also appeared in various other TV series, including the second series of Blackadder (playing Sir Walter Raleigh) and Brideshead Revisited (in which he played the Earl of Brideshead, the heir to the Marquess of Marchmain), and films, including Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, and Green Card.

Like some of the Pythons, he studied at the University of Cambridge and was a member of the famous Footlights, where he also met Douglas Adams. This led to Jones being cast in Out of the Trees and later The Hitchhiker's Guide and some of the solo projects of the members of Monty Python.

Jones is also a voice actor and audiobook presenter:

In 2003, he reprised his role as Arthur Dent in a new radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The same year he was involved in the filming of the movie version of the first novel, making a brief cameo appearance in the role of the holographic Magrathean answering machine/automated defense system.

His 2006 audio book reading of Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind won the Audio Publishers Association's 2006 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction.

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