Best known for his grimy, boorish, highly dysfunctional, often repugnant blue-collars particularly in Mike Leigh films, actor Timothy Spall was the son of a postal worker and a hairdresser. Raised in London, he auditioned and earned a spot with the National Youth Theatre and later showed great promise at RADA where he portrayed the title roles in "Macbeth" and "Othello." He also worked for noted directors Ken Russell in Gothic (1986), Clint Eastwood in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), Bernardo Bertolucci in The Sheltering Sky (1990), and Kenneth Branagh in Hamlet (1996) as Rosenkrantz. Source