Actors Gallery

Male Peking Opera Performer. Human Face of China, The. 1979

A colour image of a male Chinese actor on stage posing in ceremonial dress. He poses with his arms stretched wide with hands in an open position and is standing behind a red curtain. The costume he is wearing has large horn like spoke poking out behind him. Based in Xi'an, on the old silk road to the west, the Shanxi Provincial Acrobatic Troupe are skilled in their art and loved by the people who see them perform. The troupe's tradition goes back 2000 years. It spends as much as eight months a year on tour

© NFSA. All Rights Reserved

Actors playing Henry Tudor fighting King Richard III

Actors playing Henry Tudor fighting King Richard III of England on stage in a theatre. Other actors wait in the wings in tunics with red and white roses. A few Victorian men and women sit in the theatre boxes. The Battle of Bosworth Field. A scene from the Great Drama of History. Handcoloured steel engraving after an illustration by John Leech from Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett's Comic History of England, Bradbury, Agnew & Co. London, 1880

© Florilegius

Jack Buchanan smoking

Jack Buchanan (1890 - 1957), Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. Pictured smoking in a page from The Sketch that reported on the fact that in order to avoid hefty entertainment tax, the Shaftesbury Theatre was admitting the audience via boxes of chocolates or cigarettes, as a gesture against severe cabaret competition. Date: 1924

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans