Movies

Sir David Courtney Suchet CBE (/ˈsuːʃeɪ/; born 2 May 1946) is an English actor known for his work on British stage and television. He portrayed Edward Teller in the television serial Oppenheimer (1980) and received the RTS and BPG awards for his performance as Augustus Melmotte in the British serial The Way We Live Now (2001). International acclaim and recognition followed his performance as Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), for which he received a 1991 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nomination.

Early life and family
Suchet was born in the Paddington area of London, the son of Jack Suchet and his wife Joan Patricia (née Jarché; 1916–1992), an actress. Jack emigrated from South Africa to England in 1932, trained to be a physician at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London, in 1933, and became an obstetrician and gynaecologist.

Suchet's father was of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, the son of Izidor Suchedowitz, originally from Kretinga in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. At some point, the family name was recorded as "Schohet", a Yiddish word (from Hebrew shochet) defining the profession of kosher butcher. Suchet's father changed his surname to Suchet while living in South Africa. David's mother was born in England and was Anglican (she was of Russian-Jewish descent on her father's side, and English Anglican on her mother's side). He was raised without religion, but became a practising Anglican in 1986, and was confirmed in 2006.

Suchet and his brothers, John and Peter, attended Grenham House boarding school in Birchington-on-Sea, Kent; then, after attending another independent school, Wellington School in Somerset, he took an interest in acting and joined the National Youth Theatre at the age of 16. He trained and graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where he later became a vice president, retiring in 2018.