Robert was born in London and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
He has worked in repertory in Manchester, Oldham, Bristol, Southampton, Chichester, Edinburgh, Ipswich and Westcliff, his roles including Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, John Merrick in The Elephant Man (for which he was awarded the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actor of the Year), George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Miller in The Deep Blue Sea, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
More recently he appeared as Nightingale in Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre at the Manchester Library Theatre, and as the Duke in The Revenger’s Tragedy and as Dr David Kelly in The Palace of the End, both at The Royal Exchange.
He has twice appeared at the Crucible, Sheffield, in Michael Grandage’s productions of Edward II and Richard III. For Deborah Warner’s Kick Theatre he played Prospero in The Tempest, the Duke in Measure for Measure and Lear in King Lear, and worked with the English Shakespeare Company on a ten-month British and world tour of The Winter’s Tale and Coriolanus.
Robert spent six years with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and London, playing such roles as Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, Hubert in King John, Duke Senior in As You Like It, Lord Talbot in Henry VI and the General in Jean Genet’s The Balcony.
Other London work includes Marya (Old Vic), Medea (Wyndhams), The Rules of the Game, The Doctor’s Dilemma and The Jew of Malta (Almeida), Trelawney of the Wells and The Seagull (National), The Duchess of Malfi (Wyndhams), A Busy Day (Lyric), Oxygen (Riverside) and The Woman in Black (Fortune, plus national tours). He has worked with Thelma Holt on two British tours, playing Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew and Polonius in Hamlet, the latter directed by Yukio Ninagawa and playing at the Barbican.
He was also at the Barbican in Julius Caesar for Deborah Warner, before touring to Paris, Madrid and Luxembourg. More recently he appeared in The President’s Holiday at Hampstead.
Robert has made over sixty appearances on television, from By the Sword Divided to Waking the Dead, from Forever Green to the last series of Doctor Who. Film credits include Little Dorrit, Wuthering Heights, Different for Girls, The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, Orlando, Secret Passage and Longitude.