Russell Tovey

Russell Tovey (born 14 November 1981 in Essex) is a British actor.

In March 2009, the actor played a leading role in A Miracle at the Royal Court Theatre as Gary Trudgill, a British soldier returning to Norfolk from abroad. On 8 March 2009 he presented the Award for Best Actress to Margaret Tyzack for her performance in The Chalk Garden at the Laurence Olivier Awards in Grosvenor House.

In 2009, Tovey has been working on the film Huge and will star in two television pilots: Young, Unemployed and Lazy (a BBC Three sitcom) and The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a Channel 4 comedy with Spike Jonze and Will Arnett, written by David Cross and Shaun Pye. He also appears in three forthcoming shorts Drop (which premièred at the 2009 Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival), Roar and In Passing. Roar premièred at the Palm Springs Film Festival on 24 June 2009.

In a 2008 interview in Attitude, Tovey expressed his desire to play darker roles: "really dark, fucked-up characters... like drag queens, rent boys, someone who has been abused, a rapist", though noting that he doesn't consider himself "fucked-up".

Tovey is openly gay. In an interview with The Scotsman, Tovey said, "I came out to myself when I was about 15 or 16, and to my parents when I was 18. When you come out to your parents, that's when it's properly official... The only thing I can give to young gay people is that when I was growing up there were no role models that were blokey, that were men. Everybody was flamboyant and camp, and I remember going, 'That's not me, so even though I think I am gay, I don't think I fit into this world.'" He is currently single.