Career: Following acclaimed performances at university, Jacobi joined Birmingham Rep. He was spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the National Theatre Company. He made his film debut alongside Olivier in 1965's Othello. Since then, Jacobi has continued to make acclaimed appearances on stage and screen. Among his films are The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, Love Is the Devil, Gladiator, Gosford Park, The King's Speech and Hereafter. He inspired Kenneth Branagh to become an actor and worked alongside him in Henry V, Hamlet and Dead Again. Jacobi won a Bafta for I, Claudius in 1977, starred in the medieval-set series Cadfael, played The Master in Doctor Who, is the narrator of In the Night Garden and scored a surprise hit with Last Tango in Halifax.

Career: Hurt made both his London stage debut (in the acclaimed Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger) and his first film, The Wild and the Willing, in 1962. More theatre work and films such as A Man for All Seasons and 10 Rillington Place followed. In 1975, he won a Bafta for his portrayal of Quentin Crisp in TV drama The Naked Civil Servant, which made his name. He received Oscar nominations for Midnight Express and The Elephant Man. Other acclaimed projects included Nineteen Eighty-Four, Scandal, Alien and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He also portrayed the Tory politician Alan Clark in The Alan Clark Diaries for the BBC. He reprised his role as Quentin Crisp in 2009 in An Englishman in New York. He went on to appear in the final two Harry Potter films, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Doctor Who. He died on January 27, 2017, at the age of 77.