Famous TV Sleuths
by janusminoa | created - 4 months ago | updated - 3 months ago | Publicnot all, just the best...
1. David Suchet
Actor | Executive Decision
Widely regarded as one of England's finest stage, screen and TV actors, David Suchet's international reputation has only grown over the years, greatly enhanced by his definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's suave Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, a character he played for nearly 25 years ...
Hercule Poirot
2. Benedict Cumberbatch
Actor | The Imitation Game
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born and raised in London, England. His parents, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch), are both actors. He is a grandson of submarine commander Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, and a great-grandson of diplomat Henry Arnold ...
Sherlock Holmes
3. Geraldine McEwan
Actress | The Magdalene Sisters
Geraldine McEwan was born in Old Windsor, England and made her theatre debut at the age of 14 at the Theatre Royal in Windsor. By the age of 18 she was starring in London's West End in several long-running popular productions. During the 1950s she acted with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in ...
Miss Marple
4. Julia McKenzie
Actress | Notes on a Scandal
Julia McKenzie was born on February 17, 1941 in Enfield, Middlesex, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Notes on a Scandal (2006), Bright Young Things (2003) and Cranford (2007). She was previously married to Jerry Harte.
Miss Marple
5. Shaun Evans
Actor | Cashback
Shaun Evans was born on March 6, 1980 in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Cashback (2006), Endeavour (2012) and Being Julia (2004).
Endeavour Morse
6. Warren Clarke
Actor | A Clockwork Orange
Lancashire-born Warren Clarke was an actor of immense presence and considerable versatility who turned his wide-shouldered, robust appearance and lived-in, hangdog facial features into an asset. For more than two and a half decades he had toiled in a wide variety of supporting roles before finding ...
Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel
7. Michael Kitchen
Actor | Out of Africa
Michael Kitchen was born on October 31, 1948 in Leicester, Leicestershire, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Out of Africa (1985), GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999). He has been married to Rowena Miller since 1988. They have two children.
Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle
8. Idris Elba
Actor | Beasts of No Nation
An only child, Idrissa Akuna Elba was born and raised in London, England. His father, Winston, is from Sierra Leone and worked at Ford Dagenham; his mother, Eve, is from Ghana and had a clerical duty. Idris attended school in Canning Town, where he first became involved in acting, before he dropped...
DCI John Luther
9. David Jason
Actor | Only Fools and Horses
David Jason was born in Edmonton, London, in 1940. He has become one of Britain's most famous, versatile and respected actors, who is most famous for his role in Only Fools and Horses (1981) as Del Boy. He made his debut in the series in 1981 and was still playing the same role up to the Christmas ...
Detective Inspector William Edward "Jack" Frost
10. Brenda Blethyn
Actress | Pride & Prejudice
After forty years of hard work on stage and both television and film, there are not many other actresses who deserved the success, recognition and stardom which Brenda Blethyn has now achieved.
Born in 1946 in Ramsgate, Kent, England, she started her career at British Rail in the 1960s. Saving money...
DCI Vera Stanhope
11. Ben Miller
Actor | Professor T
Halfway through a PhD in physics at Cambridge University, Ben met Alexander Armstrong (who was also studying there) in 1992. Instead of finishing his PhD, Ben chose to scrap science for comedy and started playing at the Comedy Club Footlights, Cambridge. After four years of touring pubs and ...
Detective Inspector Richard Poole
12. Yannick Bisson
Actor | Murdoch Mysteries
Yannick Bisson was born on May 16, 1969 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for Murdoch Mysteries (2008), Anything for Jackson (2020) and Year by the Sea (2016). He has been married to Chantal Craig since May 26, 1990. They have three children.
Detective William Murdoch
13. Helen Mirren
Actress | The Queen
Dame Helen Mirren was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. Her mother, Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda (Rogers), was from a working-class English family, and her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov, was a Russian-born civil servant, from Kuryanovo, whose own father was a diplomat. ...
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison
14. Mark Williams
Actor | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mark Williams was born on August 22, 1959 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Father Brown
15. John Hannah
Actor | Four Weddings and a Funeral
John Hannah is the youngest child of his family, having two older sisters. Before he decided on a career as an actor, John was an apprentice electrician for four years. He gave up his work as an electrician after being accepted to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. After ...
Dr. Iain McCallum
16. Richard Griffiths
Actor | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The avuncular star character actor Richard Griffiths grew up in a council flat in less than prosperous conditions, the son of deaf and volatile parents in a dysfunctional family setting. According to an article in the Telegraph newspaper, his father Thomas was a steelworker 'who fought in pubs for ...
Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe
17. Alan Davies
Actor | Jonathan Creek
Alan lived in Loughton, Essex for most of his life, until he left to pursue a career in comedy. He now lives in Islington in north London. He is the second of three children, born in Essex, and has an older brother and a younger sister. He was raised by his father, an accountant when his mother ...
Jonathan Creek
18. Robbie Coltrane
Actor | Cracker
Robbie Coltrane, one of Britain's most popular comedians who was head of debating society at school and won prizes for his art, is now a film star who played in two James Bond films and in the "Harry Potter" franchise.
Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, a ...
Dr. Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald
19. Robson Green
Actor | Touching Evil
Robson Golightly Green was born on 18 December 1964 in Hexham, Northumberland, England, to Robson and Ann Green. He has two sisters, Dawn and Joanna; a wife, Vanya Seager; and a son (born in 2000). He began his TV/film career on Casualty (1986) as hospital porter Jimmy Powell. He then appeared in ...
Dr. Tony Hill
20. Telly Savalas
Actor | Kojak
Of Greek descent on both sides, the son of immigrants, Savalas was a soldier during World War II, although most of his enlistment records were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. He later studied psychology at Columbia University under the ...
Detective Lieutenant Theodopolus "Theo" Kojak
21. Mike Connors
Actor | Mannix
He once jokingly described himself as 'a frustrated song-and-dance man' who wound up typecast as a TV crime fighter. Tall, handsome Armenian-American Mike Connors had a minor career in the movies before becoming a star on the small screen as the impeccably dressed macho sleuth Joe Mannix. Towards ...
Joe Mannix
22. Steve Forrest
Actor | Mommie Dearest
A ruggedly handsome action man of the 1960s and '70s, Steve Forrest was born William Forrest Andrews in Huntsville, Texas, the youngest of thirteen children of Annis (Speed) and Charles Forrest Andrews, a Baptist minister. His brother was actor Dana Andrews. Forrest began his screen career as a ...
John Mannering
23. Peter Wyngarde
Actor | Flash Gordon
Peter Paul Wyngarde was born at the home of an aunt in Marseille, Southern France, and is the son of an English father and French mother. Owing to his father's work as a member of the British Diplomatic Service, Peter spent much of his early childhood moving from one country to another, and was ...
Jason King
24. Tony Shalhoub
Actor | Monk
Anthony Marc Shalhoub was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father, Joseph Shalhoub, who owned a grocery chain, emigrated from Lebanon to the United States as an orphan at age ten, later marrying Shalhoub's mother, Helen (Seroogy), who herself was born in Wisconsin, to Lebanese parents. ...
Adrian Monk
25. Andre Braugher
Actor | Homicide: Life on the Street
Many actors have attempted to crack both genres of drama and comedy. Few have succeeded, among them the genial Andre Braugher (pronounced 'Ahn-drey Braw-ger'). A two-time Emmy Award winner, he is especially remembered for two seminal roles: as the intense, often explosive Detective Frank Pembleton ...
Detective Frank Pembleton
26. James Garner
Actor | The Notebook
Amiable and handsome James Garner had obtained success in both films and television, often playing variations of the charming anti-hero/con-man persona he first developed in Maverick, the offbeat western TV series that shot him to stardom in the late 1950s.
James Garner was born James Scott ...
Jim Rockford
27. Peter Falk
Actor | Columbo
Peter Michael Falk was born on September 16, 1927, in New York City, New York. At the age of 3, his right eye was surgically removed due to cancer. He graduated from Ossining High School, where he was president of his class. His early career choices involved becoming a certified public accountant, ...
Lieutenant Columbo
28. Angela Lansbury
Actress | The Manchurian Candidate
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar ...
Jessica Fletcher
29. Dennis Weaver
Actor | Touch of Evil
Dennis Weaver first became familiar to television audiences as Matt Dillon's assistant Chester Goode in Gunsmoke (1955). After playing the part for nine years, he moved on to star in his own series, Kentucky Jones (1964). However, the show failed to find mass appeal and was cancelled after just one...
Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud
30. Jack Webb
Writer | Dragnet
John Randolph Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, to Margaret (Smith) and Samuel Chester Webb. His father left home before he was born; Webb would never know him. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother in dire poverty that preceded the Depression. Making things worse, Webb ...
Sergeant Joe Friday
31. Titus Welliver
Actor | The Town
Titus Welliver was born on March 12, 1962 in New Haven, Connecticut. His father was a famous landscape painter, Neil Welliver. His mother was a fashion illustrator, Norma Cripps. He has three brothers, one was killed overseas. He was raised in Philadelphia and New York City, surrounded by poets and...
LAPD Detective Harry Bosch
32. Darren McGavin
Actor | A Christmas Story
A remarkably seasoned actor of stage, screen and television, Darren McGavin has notched in excess of 200 performances; however, he is most fondly remembered by cult TV fans as heroic newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak in the classic but short-lived horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974). ...
Carl Kolchak
33. Iain Glen
Actor | Game of Thrones
Iain Glen is a Scottish actor, born June 24, 1961, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, an independent school for boys (now co-educational), followed by the University of Aberdeen. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he was the winner of the ...
Jack Taylor
34. Daniel Brühl
Actor | Rush
Daniel Brühl was born in Barcelona, Spain. His father was German TV director Hanno Brühl (1937-2010), who was born in São Paulo, Brazil. His Spanish mother was a teacher. He also has a brother and a sister, Oliver and Miriam. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he ...
Laszlo Kreizler
35. Raymond Burr
Actor | Rear Window
Born Raymond William Stacy Burr on 21 May 1917 in New Westminster, British Columbia, he spent most of his early life traveling. As a youngster, his father moved his family to China, where the elder Burr worked as a trade agent. When the family returned to Canada, Raymond's parents separated. He and...
Perry Mason
36. Robert Taylor
Actor | Focus
Robert Taylor is one of Australia's busiest actors with an illustrious career spanning over international film and television. Perhaps best known for his portrayal of the title role of Walt Longmire in Netflix's record breaking drama series Longmire, which recently released its sixth and final ...
Sheriff Walt Longmire
37. Jack Klugman
Actor | 12 Angry Men
As a film character actor, Klugman was the epitome of the everyman. He was one of the pioneers of television acting in the 1950s, and is best remembered for his 1970s TV work as Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple (1970) and as the medical examiner on Quincy M.E. (1976).
Dr. Quincy M.E.
38. Kenneth Branagh
Actor | Henry V
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter, and Frances (Harper), both born in 1930. He has two siblings, William Branagh, Jr. (born 1955) and Joyce Branagh (born 1970). When he was nine, his family ...
Wallander
39. Ioan Gruffudd
Actor | Fantastic Four
Ioan Gruffudd was born on October 6, 1973 in Cardiff, Wales, UK to educators Gillian (James) and Peter Gruffudd. He has a brother, Alun, who is two years younger and a sister, Siwan, who is seven years younger. He got his start at age 13 in the Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm (1974). He attended the ...
Harrow
40. Neil Dudgeon
Actor | Son of Rambow
Neil Dudgeon was born on January 2, 1961 in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Son of Rambow (2007), Midsomer Murders (1997) and Messiah: The Harrowing (2005). He is married to Mary Peate.
DCI John Barnaby
41. Maury Chaykin
Actor | My Cousin Vinny
The award-winning Canadian-American character actor Maury Chaykin was born on July 27, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Professor Irving J. Chaykin and his wife Clarice. Irving Chaykin, an American citizen, taught accountancy at the City College of New York. The former Clarice Bloomfield, his...
Nero Wolfe
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