Simon Jones (actor)

Infobox actor
name = Simon Jones


caption = Jones as an upset Arthur Dent, watching his home being demolished in the first episode of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy BBC TV series"
birthdate = birth date and age|1950|7|27
birthplace = 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 also appeared in various other TV series, including the 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:
*"The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" for Simon and Schuster Audioworks for the US market
*"Star Trek: Cacophony", playing Lt. Commander Stewart Mulligan in an original "Captain Sulu Adventures" audio program, again for Simon and Schuster
*"The Salmon of Doubt", for New Millennium Audio
*"Douglas Adams at the BBC", for BBC Audio
*The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud: "The Amulet of Samarkand", "The Golem's Eye", "Ptolemy's Gate"

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 defence 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.

External links

*imdb name|id=0429254|name=Simon Jones
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/simon.shtml BBC - Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Simon Jones]