Camberwell College of Arts

Simon Timothy "Tim" Roth is an English film actor and director best known for his roles in the American films, Legend of 1900, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp... Fiction, Four Rooms, Skellig, Planet of the Apes, The Incredible Hulk and Rob Roy, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the latter. He most recently starred as Cal Lightman in the TV series Lie to Me. Roth was born in London, England, the son of Ann, a painter and teacher, and Ernie, a Fleet Street journalist, painter and, until the 1970s, a member of the British Communist Party. Roth's father was born under the surname "Smith" in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, to a British immigrant family of Irish descent. He changed his surname to "Roth" after World War II "partly through solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, partly because the British were far from welcome in some of the countries to which his job took him". Roth attended the Strand School in Tulse Hill. As a young man, he wanted to be a sculptor and studied at London's Camberwell College of Art. Roth made his acting debut at the age of 21 playing a white power skinhead in a TV film titled Made in Britain.
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