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:
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)