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James Callis (born June 4, 1971) is a British actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series. An award-winning stage actor in his native England, James Callis was a veteran of film, television and stage before he accepted the role of Dr. Gaius Baltar on the revamped and acclaimed “Battlestar Galactica” (The Sci Fi Channel, 2004- ). His performance as the tormented scientist who was seduced into betraying mankind by the warlike bio-mechanical Cylons, and who struggled with guilt and madness throughout the series’ four season run, earned some of the highest praise from television critics and fans alike, signaling Callis’ arrival on the international scene as a performer with considerable potential. “Galactica” occupied most of Callis’ time from 2003 through 2007, though he did manage to appear in the quirky indie comedy-drama “Dead Cool” (2004), starring as the ghost of a man killed in a bus accident who returns to visit his eccentric family whenever he feels they are about to forget him. He later played the villainous Haman, nobleman in the court of King Xerxes (Luke Goss), in the 2006 theatrical release “One Night with The King,” which was based on the Biblical story of Queen Esther. In 2008, he returned for the fourth and final season of “Galactica,” with fans anxious to see who or what would seal Baltar’s fate. Callis was born and raised in London, where he attended Harrow School in North West London. His parents owned a bed-and-breakfast. Callis is Jewish, the descendant of immigrants from Russia and Poland. In 1990, he studied for a BA in English and Related Literature at the University of York, where he was a member of Derwent College. At university he was a keen student actor, director, and writer, sometimes also appearing in productions put on by friends at Cambridge University, including a production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. He graduated from York in 1993. Callis subsequently went on to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from which he graduated in 1996, and in the same year he was awarded the Jack Tinker Award (Theatre Record Critic of the Year) for Most Promising Newcomer for his performance in Old Wicked Songs, a two-hander by Jon Marans, in which he starred alongside Bob Hoskins. Callis has appeared in various West End productions and television series as well as on radio. He has also been involved in writing and directing. His directional debut was Beginner's Luck, a co-production of his and writer/director Nick Cohen's Late Night Pictures and Angel Eye Film & TV, starring Julie Delpy, Steven Berkoff, and Fenella Fielding. Beginner's Luck was critically panned, but ran for almost three weeks on one print (all the low-budget film could afford) in one cinema in central London, then went on a tour of student cinemas around the U.K. The U.K. distributor was Guerrilla Films. The film is still on the Icon Catalogue. In the original “Galactica,” Baltar (played by character actor John Colicos) was a hissable villain straight from the pulp serials of the 1930s, who betrayed his fellow humans for a position of power with the despotic robot race known as the Cylons. Callis’ Baltar was a scientist whose resolve is weakened by a sexual relationship with the Cylon, Number Six (Tricia Helfer). |
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