Stephen Moyer life and biography

Stephen Moyer (born Stephen John Emery) is an English actor who has starred as vampire Bill Compton in the HBO series True Blood since 2008.
Moyer was born in Brentwood, Essex. He attended St Martin's School, a comprehensive school in Hutton, Essex, and graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
He became Brentwood Theatre's first patron in October 2007, especially supporting their "Reaching Out, Building On" campaign to help fund the 2008 completion of backstage facilities.
At age 13, he was cast as Tom Sawyer in what became the first of many school productions, and from that point on he knew that acting was what he wanted to do. At the same time, Stephen started performing with several local amateur companies in Brentwood, Chelmsford & Colchester, Essex where he continued to make a name for himself in musical theatre.
After graduating from LAMDA, Stephen Moyer worked in theatre for five years. He worked with the National Theatre of Wales, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Oxford Stage Company, work which included going on tour and playing Romeo in productions of Romeo and Juliet. He then made the transition to television and film.
By his late teens, he and some school friends had formed a rock band called Prophecy – Stephen was the lead singer, and describes them as a sort of poppy-rocky-jive-jazzy fusion sub-genre band! They were a talented group of young musicians who wrote most of their own music (but did a great cover version of Elvis’s Trouble) and gigged locally for a couple of years.

However by now he had also established his own theatre company – The Reject Society – where he started producing, directing and appearing in plays such as Private Wars and Twelve Angry Men as well as the contemporary comedy, Bouncers, and ultimately this was the path that he actively pursued.
Many didn’t know Stephen Moyer prior to his role in True Blood, even though he has been acting and making a living at it for over 16 years. He is quoted as proudly saying, “I haven’t had to take a bar job since I left drama school.” However, he has admitted that he never wanted to do publicity for any of the films or TV shows he’d done prior to True Blood so, for all those years he was able to stay in the background and never had the notoriety that he is now experiencing. Stephen explained in an interview at the Screen Actors Guild Screening of an episode of True Blood on 6/14/09 how he hadn’t done any publicity in all the years he’d been acting, and that now, contractually, he must. He explained how that wasn’t why he got into acting. He liked the anonymity and being able to enjoy the outdoors with his children, without worrying about what clothes he had on, or as he said, “If his knobby knees were going to end up on US Weekly” (he referred to a photo of him and Anna that was published by US Weekly).
But in spite of the publicity and newly found fame associated with his role in True Blood he did say that… “There’s no other gig I’d rather be doing… I’m profoundly happy.” “For the first time in my life, I’m not chasing after anything, nothing out there I want. I’m not running away from anything because I’m not scared of anything."
He did a lot of theatre and he says he loved it, but it really was not where he saw his career going so he transitioned to film and TV where his first work included a role in a sitcom about a family with a talking dog that he now laughingly describes as a “crime against television.” He’s been doing leading roles in TV and film ever since.

His British television credits include leading roles in Channel 4 dramas ‘Men Only’, ‘NY-LON’, Five’s ‘Menace‘ and the BBC’s ‘The Grand’, ‘Lilies‘ and ‘Empathy‘, as well as a number of guest roles in popular shows such as ‘Cold Feet’, ‘Midsomer Murders‘ and ‘Waking the Dead.’ In the meantime, he made his screen debut starring in the eponymous role in ‘Prince Valiant‘ with Katherine Heigl, followed by ‘Quills‘ with Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix & Michael Caine, as well in subsequent movies Including ‘Entrusted‘ and ‘Restraint.’ US television credits include leading roles in ‘Princess of Thieves‘ with Keira Knightley, NBC’s mini-series ‘Uprising‘ with ‘David Schwimmer’, Hank Azaria, and Donald Sutherland, USA Network’s Golden Globe and Emmy nominated ‘The Starter Wife’ starring Debra Messing. He was supposed to appear in the FOX drama pilot ‘NSA Innocent’ (retitled ‘Company Man’), but got the role in “True Blood” instead. His earlier role was taken over by Jason Behr.
On 5 August 2009, it was confirmed that Moyer had become engaged to Anna Paquin, who plays his character's love interest in the HBO series True Blood.They had been dating since filming the series pilot in 2007. On 21 August 2010, Moyer and Paquin married at a private residence in Malibu, California. They reside in Venice, Los Angeles.
Moyer has a son, Billy, born in 2000, and a daughter, Lilac, born in 2002, from previous relationships.

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