The actor, director and playwright on a delicious social enterprise, a radical climate movement, and his favourite place to commune with the dead

Born in Cambridge in 1957, Simon McBurney is an actor, playwright, and theatre and opera director. In 1983 he co-founded the theatre company Complicité, which has put on productions such as the award-winning The Encounter, A Disappearing Number, A Dog’s Heart, and 2022’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. McBurney’s filmography includes Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Manchurian Candidate and The Last King of Scotland. He is married to concert pianist Cassie Yukawa; they have three children. Mnemonic, originally conceived and directed by McBurney in 1999, is at the Olivier theatre, National Theatre until 10 August.