Jonathan Bailey

Born in Oxfordshire in 1988, Jonathan Bailey is an Olivier Award-winning actor, best known for starring in Company and in the television series Bridgerton. Bailey returned to the West End in 2022 to appear in Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre, alongside Taron Egerton and Phil Daniels. 

As a young child, Bailey was interested in performing, thanks to seeing Oliver! at the age of five. At seven years old, he was scouted to play Child Scrooge/Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol at the Barbican for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and two years later played Gavroche in Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre. As a teenager, he returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Prince Arthur in a production of King John. Clearly, his child acting career set him up in good stead for what was to come. 

After finishing his A Levels, Bailey was cast in many regional productions, including Beautiful Thing, Pretend You Have Big Buildings and The Mother Ship. He eventually made his West End debut in Girl With a Pearl Earring at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2008. Read a review for Girl With a Pearl Earring starring Jonathan Bailey here. 

In 2011, Bailey was cast as Duffield in South Downs at the Chichester Festival Theatre, which later transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre the following year. The Terrence Rattigan play was presented as a double bill with The Browning Version, and you can read a South Downs review here. A year later, Bailey starred in the world premiere of American Psycho at the Almeida Theatre alongside Lucie Jones. 

More recently, Bailey has become a West End leading man, starring in The Last Five Years at The Other Palace alongside Samantha Barks, as well as Certain Young Men at the National Theatre and The York Realist at the Donmar Warehouse. His Olivier Award-winning performance came in 2018, cast as Jamie in a gender-swapped revival of Company, winning the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical.

On television, Bailey is best known for playing Viscount Anthony Bridgerton in the Netflix series Bridgerton. He has also been in shows such as W1A, Crashing, Chewing Gum and Me and Mrs. Jones. 

Bailey returned to the West End in 2022, starring in a revival of Mike Bartlett’s Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre.