Kevin Whately

 ( 1951 Births ) 

His acting career includes several , among them an adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, and film appearances in The Return of the Soldier, The English Patient, Paranoid and Purely Belter.

Whately's television appearances include episodes of Shoestring, Geordie Racer, Angels, Juliet Bravo, Strangers, Coronation Street, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Alas Smith and Jones, Look and Read, You Must Be The Husband, B&B, Peak Practice, Skallagrigg, Murder in Mind, Inspector Morse, 2003 Comic Relief Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Lewis, New Tricks, Who Gets the Dog?, The Children, Silent Cry and Midsomer Murders. Whately provided one of the voices for the English-language version of the 1999 claymation children's television series Hilltop Hospital. He has also done voiceovers for a WaterAid advertisement.

In 1985, Whately appeared in a three-part Miss Marple adaptation ("A Murder Is Announced") for the BBC, playing Detective Sergeant Fletcher, opposite John Castle as Inspector Craddock. Two years later, his role as Detective Sergeant Lewis in the series Inspector Morse established him as a household name in the UK. Whately starred opposite the eponymous Inspector Morse, played by John Thaw, in 32 episodes over 13 years in the hugely successful series.

Whately reprised the role in the spin-off series Lewis, in which Lewis returns to Oxford as a full Inspector. With his new partner, the Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), Inspector Lewis solves murder mysteries while trying to rebuild his life after his wife's sudden death in a hit-and-run accident and to gain recognition from his initially sceptical new boss.

Whately was the lead in The Broker's Man, two series of 90 minute self-contained dramas about a former policeman turned insurance fraud investigator.

In 2010, Whately played the lead in the television film Joe Maddison's War about strained family and social relations in wartime. Directed by Patrick Collerton, it presented a view of World War II through the eyes of shipyard worker and World War I veteran Joe Maddison (Kevin Whately) who serves in the Home Guard during the Blitz.

Upon the conclusion of filming the seventh series of Lewis, at the end of 2012, both Whately and Laurence Fox announced that they would take a break of at least a year before appearing in any more episodes. ITV indicated a continuing commitment to the series and that they wished to produce additional episodes of the programme. On 4 November 2012, Whately performed in a radio drama on BBC3 called The Torchbearers, which chronicles the circumstances of several UK citizens whose lives are changed through contact with the Olympic Torch. In 2013, the Live Theatre of Newcastle upon Tyne produced a series of performances of the unique, acclaimed one-person play, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, which is enacted as a cold reading with no sets or costumes by a different performer each night. Whately was the actor for the sold-out performance of 10 March 2013. Following the end of the ninth and final series of Lewis, Whately announced he had no intention of returning to the role of "Lewis", a character he had played over a span of 28 years.

Whately was the patron of the Central School of Speech and Drama Full House Theatre Company for 2011.

Whately enjoys rock music and plays the guitar; he has cited Pink Floyd and Dire Straits as bands he has particularly enjoyed. He is a fan of Newcastle United on the football field, but says that he prefers rugby league, and as a admitted to Inspector Morse writer Colin Dexter that he would like to have played cricket professionally for England. Dexter devised the storyline for the Inspector Morse episode "Deceived by Flight" (1989; series 3, episode 3) in which Sergeant Lewis had to go undercover in a cricket team to investigate drug smuggling.

In August 2014, Whately was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's independence referendum.

Whately was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to drama and to charity.