Biography
Alexander Fiske-Harrison acted throughout his time at school, where he was directed by Toby Leslie and university, where he was directed by Hugh Dancy, before concentrating on writing for several years following his play 'The Death of An Atheist' winning the Oxford New Writing Prize in 1998. Deciding to return to acting, and intrigued by American variants of the Method, he went to train at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York, almer mater to the likes of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Benicio Del Toro. After returning to his native England in 2005, he completed his first leading role in an independent feature, Essayette (2008), playing the self-centered and destructive ballet choreographer Killian. The following year he debuted on the London stage as Govianus, the King who loses both his throne and his wife before exacting his terrible revenge in the Jacobean play, 'The Second Maiden's Tragedy' (attributed to Middleton & Shakespeare) at the Hackney Empire, London, in February, 2006, to excellent reviews in the Financial Times, Time Out and The Stage. After continued theatre work, he returned to film in late 2006, playing the troubled Carabinieri Detective Paolo Lazarri, in the US-Italian independent co-production, The Seer (2007), filmed on location in Sardinia and Los Angeles. He returned to the stage, both in England and Germany, where his "macho-posturing" was described as "expertly acted" in Die Welt for his role as Elliott in Lawrence Roman's 'Alone Together' at the English Theatre of Hamburg. In 2008 he appeared as Captain Friedrich von Leiben in 'The Pendulum' in the West End in London, of which Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian " the author himself plays the disintegrating hero with the right poker-backed irascibility [and] it is refreshing to find a new play that gets away from bedsit angst: one comes away with the sensation of having seen an accomplished historical play." From 2008-2010 Fiske-Harrison was in Spain researching for his book on bullfighting - including training as a bullfighter himself - "Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight" (Profile Books, UK, May 2011), which was shortlisted for the oldest and richest sports writing literature prize in the world, the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award. He appeared on television multiple times during this period as himself, on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, US NPR, ABC (Australia) and the Discovery Channel, including for Bear Grylls. He also worked as consultant on Listen to Me Marlon (2015) and Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014). In 2023, he returned to acting as the lead in a short film for the British Forces Broadcasting Service, BFBS Creative (2020), playing a British spy and former solder captured and imprisoned in the Soviet Union and betrayed by his MI6 handlers.
