Simon Jones

Simon Jones (born 27 July 1950) is an English actor. He portrayed Arthur Dent, protagonist of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on radio in 1978 and again on television in 1981. Jones also appeared in the film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) in a cameo role. He also played the role of Donald Shellhammer in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), appeared in Brideshead Revisited as Lord Brideshead, and as King George V in the film Downton Abbey.

Jones appeared in various television series, including Brideshead Revisited (in which he played the Earl of Brideshead, or ‘Bridey’, heir to the Marquess of Marchmain), and the second series of Blackadder (playing Sir Walter Raleigh). His films have included Club Paradise, Privates on Parade, Miracle on 34th Street and The Devil’s Own.

Jones studied at King’s College, Taunton, before going up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Footlights and met Douglas Adams. This led to Jones being cast in Out of the Trees and later The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The latter project, a radio broadcast from 1978, would be the first of Jones’s several portrayals of Arthur Dent; Adams claimed to Jones that he wrote the part of Dent with him in mind.[1] In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Jones had a minor role as one of the guests at the dinner party which is interrupted by the Grim Reaper. He has also appeared in some of the solo film projects of the members of Monty Python: Privates on Parade (with John Cleese) American Friends (with Michael Palin), and Brazil and 12 Monkeys (both directed by Terry Gilliam).