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:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)