Two of the biggest British screen hits of recent times—Downton Abbey and the Paddington films—have a couple of obvious things in common: bags of charm and Hugh Bonneville. Reading Playing under the Piano, it’s clear that these are closely related. Bonneville tells of his life with appealing modesty and, while it’s not exactly unusual for actors to stress how lucky they’ve been, he really seems to mean it.
His big break, for instance, came while touring Europe in . By complete chance, one performance in Florence was attended by Jonathan Lynn, best-known for co-writing but at the time directing plays at the National Theatre. Lynn was impressed enough to get the 22-year-old Hugh a National audition—after which his professional life hasn’t done much in the way of looking back. “Had Jonathan Lynn not chosen Florence for a long weekend in the autumn of 1986, would I have played Henry Brown in the films?” Bonneville wonders. “Or been asked to write this book?”
