David Meyer

David Meyer (born 24 July 1947) is an English actor. He is the twin of Anthony Meyer who has often appeared alongside him in film. He is best known for his role as a knife-throwing circus performer and assassin in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, for Shakespearean roles such as Hamlet and Ferdinand, and for portraying Isaac Newton on stage. Meyer, as part of Shakespeare's Globe, has appeared in numerous productions on stage in London in recent decades, and in 2017 played Saturn in James Wallace's production of The Woman in the Moon at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Early career Between August 1972 and 24 November 1972 and 23 January 1973 and August 1973, David Meyer played a Fairy in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with his twin brother Anthony Meyer playing the role until 13 January 1973. The tour included performances at the Aldwych Theatre in London. In October 1974, Meyer starred in the Lindsay Kemp Broadway play Flowers at the Biltmore Theatre in New York City. In August 1975 he played Wilf in a Kevin Billington production of Bloody Neighbours at the ICA Theatre in London, a role which Charles Lewsen in The Times described as "hypnotically fascinating". Hamlet and other film roles, 1976–1989 In 1976 Meyer and his twin appeared in the Celestrino Coronado film adaption of Shakespeare's Hamlet, portraying Hamlet and Laertes. The Shakespeare scholar and author Stephen M. Buhler states that director Coronado had "done a wildly experimental film essay on Hamlet in 1976, stressing the internal divisions and sexual conflicts within the title character and the language he employs: two actors, Anthony and David Meyer." In 1978, the twin brothers portrayed the grown up characters of twins Andrew and Étienne and sons of William Shatner's character in the Canadian film The Third Walker, a film about two families in Cape Breton Island whose infant sons are mistakenly switched at birth by the hospital. The film garnered three Canadian Film Award nominations at the 29th Canadian Film Awards. David Meyer also played the character of Henry Ingram in the Philip Mackie BBC television mini series An Englishman's Castle alongside actors such as Kenneth More and Nigel Havers. In 1979, Meyer had another lead role playing Ferdinand opposite Peter Bull as Alonso, King of Naples in the Derek Jarman film The Tempest. In 1982, Meyer and his brother played the Poulencs in Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract.