| Biography | Steve Nallon (born 8 November 1960) is a British actor, writer and impressionist, best known for impersonating Margaret Thatcher on television throughout her time as Prime Minister of the UK (19791990).
Nallon began his career as a stand-up performer on the northern club circuit, before joining the team of the British satirical puppet show Spitting Image in 1984. He has performed in a number of other roles as an actor and voice artist in theatre, film, television and radio.
Nallon grew up in a working-class family in Leeds in the 1960s. His father was a church caretaker. Nallon attended a Jesuit school in Leeds. He later described his early years as "at times a tough and sometimes rough childhood." Whilst still at school, he developed a comedy act and performed from the age of 16 in local Working Men's Clubs in Yorkshire and the North.
In 1979, Nallon began studying Drama and English at the University of Birmingham.
In 1984, Nallon became a founding member of the Spitting Image team. The series aired on the ITV network for twelve years from 1984 to 1996 and featured puppet caricatures of celebrities. Although Nallon became most famous for providing the voice of Margaret Thatcher on the show, he also voiced many of the show's other characters, including Roy Hattersley, The Queen Mother, Alan Bennett and David Attenborough.
In 1989, Nallon co-wrote I, Margaret with Tom Holt, a spoof autobiography of Baroness Thatcher.
In 1999, Nallon co-wrote The Ghost of Number Ten and The Nallon Tapes for BBC Radio Four. He performed all the voices in The Nallon Tapes, and in The Ghost of Number Ten he played the multi-voiced computer.
In 2003, he starred in Steve Nallon's Christmas Carol, a theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at the Birmingham Repertory. As an actor, Nallon has performed in several musicals. On film, he appeared as the family doctor in The Girl With Brains In Her Feet, a film about a talented teenage athlete who struggles to come to terms with the traumas of life.[2]
Nallon has combined theatre and acting roles with his work as an impressionist. In 2003 he was interviewed for the BBC One history of the comic impressionist Who Did You Do? presented by Ricky Gervais. Nallon featured on the BBC's tribute to the art and craft of the impressionist, Night of a Thousand Faces (2001), and he guest starred on Alistair McGowan's Big Impression series (2001) and The Impressionable Jon Culshaw series (2004).
Nallon has continued to perform in the guise of Baroness Thatcher. In 2011, Nallon provided the voice of Margaret Thatcher for the film In Search of La Che.
In 2013, Nallon played Ada/Roy in Cissie and Ada: An Hysterical Rectomy, a stage show based upon the characters played by Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough. The show is also a character study of Dawson |