Biography
Jim Dale MBE is an English actor, voice artist, singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United Kingdom for his many appearances in the Carry On series of films and is known in the US for narrating the Harry Potter audiobook series, for which he received two Grammy Awards, and the ABC series Pushing Daisies.
Dale was born(on 15 August 1935 ) James Smith to William Henry Smith and Miriam Jean Wells in Rothwell, Northamptonshire, England.After attending Kettering Grammar School there, he performed two years national service in the Royal Air Force. He trained as a ballet dancer before his debut as a stage comic in 1951.Dale has lived in New York since 1980. He was married to Patricia from 1957 until their divorce in 1977. They had 4 children, one of whom, Murray Dale, was briefly an actor in the 1970s children's television series Boy Dominic. His youngest son, Toby Dale, is also an actor living in London. Another son Adam is an award winning helicopter camera man. Jim's only daughter Belinda died of leukemia in December 1995. In 1980, Jim married Julia Schafler, the owner of Madison Avenue’s prestigious "Julie: Artisan’s Gallery."
As a songwriter Dale is best remembered as the lyricist for the movie theme Georgy Girl, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1966.
As a singer he became the first artist under the wing of Sir George Martin who produced many hit records for him. Dale also wrote and recorded the song Dick-a-Dum-Dum (King's Road), which became a hit for Des O'Connor in 1969.
To millions of fans in the United States and Canada, Jim Dale is the "voice" of Harry Potter. (In Britain the audiobooks are produced by Bloomsbury, and Stephen Fry reads them.) He has recorded all seven books in the Harry Potter series, and as a narrator he has won two Grammy Awards, seven Grammy Nominations and a record ten Audie Awards including "Audio Book of the Year 2004," "Best Children's Narrator 2001/2005/2007/2008," "Best Children's Audio Book 2005," two Benjamin Franklin Awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association (one of these was in 2001 for Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban) and eleven Audio File Earphone Awards. He is also the narrator for the Harry Potter video games, and for many of the interactive "extras" on the Harry Potter DVD releases. He also holds two Guinness World Records: one for having created and recorded 146 different character voices for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and one for occupying the first six places in the Top Ten Audio Books of America and Canada 2005. His work has been parodied as Dirty Potter.Dale also did voice work for the Walgreens "perfect" ads.Because of his popularity as a narrator, Dale narrated the ABC drama, Pushing Daisies, adding the "fairy tale" voice for this "forensics fairy tale."Queen Elizabeth II made a member of the Order of the British Empire for his work in promoting English children’s literature.
He got
# 2006 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical - The Threepenny Opera
# 2008 Grammy Award Best Spoken Word Album for Children - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
and nominated in
# 2006 Tony Award Best Featured Actor in a Musical - The Threepenny Opera
# 2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actor in a Play - Comedians