Career
As a child, he attended the Anna Scher children's theatre school in Islington, and in his teens appeared in Nanette Newman's children's cooking programme, Fun Food Factory and in several television plays and series, usually with his trademark rockabilly look. Also an extra with one line, ("Watch it mate!"), in an episode of Minder from 1980 entitled "Don't Tell Them Willie Boy was Here". He first came to wider public attention in the serial Annika in 1984, his first notable television role. He then subsequently appeared in the movie Wish You Were Here (1987), directed by David Leland and co-starring Emily Lloyd. Another notable television role was his portrayal of slick playboy Marcus Tandy in the infamous BBC1 soap opera Eldorado, which ran for just one year from 1992–93 and gained a reputation as one of the biggest television flops of all time. Nonetheless, the amount of coverage the programme received for its perceived low quality and lack of success would gain Birdsall much exposure, and from 1995 to 1999 he played one of the lead characters in another BBC1 programme, the successful futuristic action/adventure series Bugs.
He appeared in several episodes of the ITV police drama The Bill in 2003 as a character named Ron Gregory, a convicted paedophile, and for the same network appeared as a regular in series 3-5 of the popular drama Footballer's Wives.
He had a small role in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders in August 2012, playing John Hewland, jilted fiancé of Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean), in two episodes.
Read more about this topic: Jesse Birdsall
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)