Peter Eyre, a renowned stage actor, was born in New York City to banker Edward Joseph Eyre and his wife, Dorothy Pelline (née Acton). As a young boy, he moved to Britain at the age of twelve, where he attended public school, but resisted his parents' wishes to study at Oxford.
Instead, Eyre secretly auditioned at RADA, and although his acceptance was deferred for a year, he moved to Paris to take drama classes with the Belgian-born thespian Berthe Bovy.
Eyre's theatrical career began in 1960 with a role in Macbeth at Dublin's Old Vic. It took eight years for his first major breakthrough, playing Konstantin in Chekhov's The Seagull, at the Nottingham Playhouse under the direction of Jonathan Miller.
Tall, narrow-faced, and of dignified comportment, Eyre has since acted in classical roles with the RSC, the Bristol Old Vic, and at the West End. He has been cast in roles that require men of gravitas, playing lords, princes, and even a Roman Emperor and the Pope.
Eyre cited his 1995 Broadway performance as Polonius in Hamlet, co-starring with Ralph Fiennes, Francesca Annis, and James Laurenson, as a career highlight.
On screen, Eyre has appeared in character roles since 1964, ranging from poets to bishops, from butlers to kings. He has had frequent TV guest roles and appeared in a quartet of Merchant/Ivory Productions, including Maurice (1987),The Remains of the Day (1993),Surviving Picasso (1996),and The Golden Bowl (2000).
Eyre's other notable portrayals include the poet Cinna, one of the conspirators in the assassination of Julius Caesar (1970),Jörgen Tesman, the dullish academic husband of Hedda (1975),Norton Shaw, president of the Royal Geographic Society, in Mountains of the Moon (1990),and King Casiodorus in the fantasy Dragonslayer (1981).
