Career
In his 3rd year of drama school, friend Ashley Callie was going to audition for the annual Christmas pantomime. Emery was persuaded to go along and ended up being cast. He played a couple of characters, but impressed with his stand-up routine during a set change. As a result, fellow cast member, veteran actor Bill Flynn introduced him to his agent and his career was started. Around this time, he also began what was to become a prolific voice career. (He would later win a Gold Craft Award at the 2003 Loerie Advertising Awards) He played in a number of stand-up venues and established himself as character actor, often performing multiple roles within a single play, such as all the male roles in Mark Ravenhill's Sleeping Around and Tom, Leslie and Phyllis in A.R. Gurney's Sylvia.
He performed standup comedy on television and was a series regular on the sketch comedy show Not Quite Friday Night. He received the National Vita Award for Comedy for the role of Maloom in the play Heel Against the Head, once again alongside Bill Flynn and actor/playwright Paul Slabolepszy. Emery has also performed his own one-man plays, Thin Man Talking and The Great Glendini. For the latter, he recorded a jazz standards album, Standard Ease. He acted alongside the late Bill Flynn for a third and final time, playing Bernard to Flynn's Willy Loman in the award-winning Baxter Theatre production of Death of a Salesman.
Thanks to his keen ear for accents, Emery found himself playing various roles in visiting British and American film and television productions. He soon decided that the screen was where he wanted to focus his attention. With most major projects casting their lead roles overseas, he decided it was time to explore more diverse opportunities. In late 2003, he moved to Los Angeles, where he has played memorable characters both on screen (Last Resort, Takers, Moonlight, Burn Notice) and for video games such as Vanquish, Dragon Age, Street Fighter X Tekken and Battlefield 3.
Read more about this topic: Gideon Emery
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