Simon Gipps-Kent

Simon Gipps-Kent (born Simon Trevor Kent; 25 October 1958 – 16 September 1987) was a prolific 20th-century English theatre and film actor in the 1970s–80s, noted for his teenage portrayals of British royalty and nobility. He was born into a show business family in Kensington, London. His television debut was on the BBC in 1971 followed with a London West End theatre debut in 1972. He continued to act on stage, film and television until the year before his death in 1987. Simon Trevor Kent was born in London to Peter Gipps Kent, a variety artist, and Sonia (née Aebersold) Kent, a dancer. At age 12 he decided acting would be his career. As a youth he attended the Ladbroke Grove School in West London where he wrote, produced, directed and acted in his own play as a way of gaining recognition. Brought up as a Catholic, he attended the London Oratory School in Brompton from September 1970 to June 1974, moving to Cardinal Manning Roman Catholic Boys' School, also in London. Simon Gipps-Kent, as he would later call himself, had early experience on the British stage that, according to his talent agency listings, included alternately playing one of the royal children (either Prince Bertie or Prince Alfie) in I and Albert at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1972–73, and as Max-Ernst Von Kellig in A Lesson in Blood and Roses headlining with Ben Kingsley at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973. He appeared in the production Fantastic Fairground at the Young Vic in 1974, and a Young Vic tour of Macbeth, playing Fleance, in Mexico and Spain in 1975. Gipps-Kent played "Emmanuel" to Herbert Lom's Napoleon Bonaparte in William Douglas-Home's Betzi at the Haymarket Theatre and road tour in 1975. In 1976–77 he appeared in Where the Rainbow Ends at the Gardner Theatre, Brighton. Gipps-Kent, in a 1979 newspaper interview headlined Simon's Problem Is Time, expressed his desire to move on to adult roles, including more Shakespeare, but in spite of his accumulated credentials to date, had been denied those opportunities.