Early Life and Education
Whitehall was born in Westminster, London, to actress Hilary Amanda Jane (née Isbister) and Michael John Whitehall. His father was an agent for Judi Dench, Colin Firth and Richard Griffiths, and wrote the memoir Shark-Infested Waters. Whitehall has a sister, Molly Louisa (born 1989), and a brother, Barnaby William (born 1992). His godfathers are the actors Nigel Havers and Richard Griffiths. He attended Tower House School in London, where he was a fellow pupil with Twilight Saga star Robert Pattinson. He has made jokes about this, often mentioning that he resented Pattinson for taking all the best acting roles in the school plays. Whitehall has also mentioned in an interview how he auditioned for the role of Harry Potter after the casting team visited his school. He went on to attend the Dragon School in Oxford and then Marlborough College, an independent school in Wiltshire. Whitehall took a gap year where he decided to pursue a career in stand-up comedy which was successful. He attended the University of Manchester to study History of Art. While at the university he lived in the Owens Park Tower.
He is a supporter of Arsenal F.C. and has stated that his comedy hero is Jack Dee, having briefly met him as a teenager.
Read more about this topic: Jack Whitehall
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“The Heavens. Once an object of superstition, awe and fear. Now a vast region for growing knowledge. The distance of Venus, the atmosphere of Mars, the size of Jupiter, and the speed of Mercury. All this and more we know. But their greatest mystery the heavens have kept a secret. What sort of life, if any, inhabits these other planets? Human life, like ours? Or life extremely lower in the scale. Or dangerously higher.”
—Richard Blake, and William Cameron Menzies. Narrator, Invaders from Mars, at the opening of the movie (1953)
“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)