Michael Pennington

Acting

Michael Pennington

Born 1943-06-07 · Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington (June 7, 1943 - May 10, 2026) was a British director and actor who, together with director Michael Bogdanov, founded the English Shakespeare Company. Although primarily a stage actor, he is best known to wider audiences for his role as Moff Jerjerrod, commanding officer of the Death Star in the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and as Michael Foot in The Iron Lady, opposite Meryl Streep.

Acting credits

Return of the Jedi poster
7.9

Luke Skywalker leads a mission to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, the Emperor prepares to crush the Rebellion with a more powerful Death Star, and the Rebel fleet mounts a massive attack on the space station. Luke Skywalker confronts Darth Vader in a final climactic duel before the evil Emperor.

Return of the Jedi

1983

The Iron Lady poster
6.4

A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.

The Iron Lady

2011

Fragile poster
6.5

Haunted by memories of a patient's death, a nurse takes a job at an antiquated hospital for children. Soon she learns that the kids fear a ghost that prowls the floors and will not allow anyone to leave. Amy tries to protect them and convince the other staffers of the evil that lurks there.

Fragile

2005

Richard III poster
NR

Shakespeare's Richard III, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Richard III

1991

No artwork available
NR

When millionaire businessman Guy Taylor takes up with the beautiful Rachel Bell, two years married to a struggling sculptor, he starts to question what he really wants. TV play. Third part of writer Kenneth Jupp's "Chelsea Trilogy"; see also The PHOTOGRAPHER (tx 29/1/1968) and The EXPLORER/ PLAYHOUSE (tx 14/10/1968).

The Tycoon

1968

Cymbeline poster
6.3

Cymbeline, the King of Britain, is angry that his daughter Imogen has chosen a poor (but worthy) man for her husband. So he banishes Posthumus, who goes to fight for Rome. Imogen (dressed as a boy) goes in search of her husband, who meanwhile has boasted to his pal Iachimo that Imogen would never betray him. And Iachimo's determined to prove him wrong.

Cymbeline

1983

1945: The Savage Peace poster
7.6

How, in 1945, after the end of World War II and the fall of the Nazi regime, the defeated were atrociously mistreated, especially those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in Germany's neighboring countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. A heartbreaking story of revenge against innocent civilians, the story of acts as cruel as the Nazi occupation during the war years.

1945: The Savage Peace

2015

Pyramid poster
7.3

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pyramid is the only one to survive. Many believe that even with our 21st-century technology, we could not build anything like it today. Based on the most up-to-date research and the latest archaeological discoveries, here is how the Pyramid came to be.

Pyramid

2002

RSC Live: Richard II poster
7.1

A monarch ordained by God to lead his people. But he is also a man of very human weakness. A man whose vanity threatens to divide the great houses of England and drag his people into a dynastic civil war that will last 100 years.

RSC Live: Richard II

2013

Henry V poster
8.0

Shakespeare's Henry V, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Henry V

1991

Henry VI: House of York poster
NR

Second part of an adapted version of Henry VI as performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Henry VI: House of York

1991

Theban Plays: Oedipus the King poster
4.5

Plagues are ravaging Thebes, and the blind fortune-teller Tieresias tells Oedipus, the King, that the gods are unhappy. The murder of the former king has gone unavenged, and Oedipus sets out to find the killer.

Theban Plays: Oedipus the King

1986

Cracker: White Ghost poster
7.0

A British businessman operating in Hong Kong has feelings of inferiority and turns to murder when he faces bankruptcy.

Cracker: White Ghost

1996

Henry VI: House of Lancaster poster
NR

First part of an adapted version of Henry VI as performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Henry VI: House of Lancaster

1991

Danton's Death poster
9.0

Danton's Death is arguably the most dramatic and penetrating study of revolution ever written. Georg Büchner concentrates on that moment in 1794 when the Reign of Terror, already well established, spills over into a total blood-bath. The play, adapted by director Alan Clarke and Stuart Griffiths, both highly imaginative and closely documentary, shows how the great hero of the early phase of the Revolution, Danton, sickened by the excesses of the guillotine, which he helped to create, wants to call a halt. But Robespierre and Saint-Just, leaders of the Jacobins, with a ferocious puritanical zeal, spur on 'the wild horses of the Revolution'.

Danton's Death

1978

The Return of Sherlock Holmes poster
6.0

Sherlock Holmes is brought back to life by Watson's female descendant after being cryogenically frozen for eighty years.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

1987

Hamlet poster
5.8

Tony Richardson's Hamlet is based on his own stage production. Filmed entirely within the Roundhouse in London (a disused train shed), it is shot almost entirely in close up, focusing the attention on faces and language rather than action.

Hamlet

1969

Henry IV: Part 1 poster
NR

Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 recorded live at the Grand Theatre in Swansea, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Henry IV: Part 1

1991

Colosseum - Rome's Arena of Death poster
7.2

Colosseum: Rome's Arena of Death aka Colosseum: A Gladiator's Story is a 2003 BBC Television docudrama which tells the true story of Verus a gladiator who fought at the Colosseum in Rome.

Colosseum - Rome's Arena of Death

2003

Florence Nightingale poster
6.0

Reflective drama of pioneering nurse, writer and noted statistician Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale

2008

Forbidden Passion: The Oscar Wilde Movie poster
NR

As in earlier Oscar Wilde biopics, this version preoccupies itself with the homosexuality scandal involving Lord Alfred Douglas and his lordship's political powerful father, the Marquis of Queensbury. Arrested for corrupting Lord Douglas' morals, Wilde spends a debilitating five years in Reading Gaol, emerging a shattered shell of his former self

Forbidden Passion: The Oscar Wilde Movie

1985

The Dinosaur Hunters poster
6.5

One man who kept asking questions was Gideon Mantell, the amateur paleontologist who, in the early 19th century, fought to get the British scientific establishment to accept Britain had been inhabited by dinosaurs. As this dramatised documentary shows, Mantell had an uphill battle in a time when the biblical account of creation was considered literal truth and authorities such as the Reverend William Buckland were determined that science remain "the handmaid of religion".

The Dinosaur Hunters

2002

No artwork available
NR

By chance a businessman changing trains at a busy railway junction overhears the station announcement for a local train to a beauty spot which he last visited when a child. On a whim he decides to take the local and revisit that spot where he, his sister and mother picnicked on an glorious summers day at the moment when the lives of both children were about to change for ever. The past, present and future combine in his memory of that day.

Waving to a Train

1984

The Marlowe Inquest poster
1.0

In an unscripted inquest, three practicing barristers interrogate actors portraying relevant figures of the 16th century in order to determine what really happened to the playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe.

The Marlowe Inquest

1986