Benjamin Charles Miles (born 29 September 1966) is an English actor, best known for his starring role as Patrick Maitland in the television comedy Coupling, from 2000 to 2004, as Montague Dartie in The Forsyte Saga, from 2002 to 2003, as propagandist and television executive Roger Dascombe in 2005 film V for Vendetta, as Peter Townsend in the Netflix drama The Crown (2016–2017) and George in episode 8 "The One That Holds Everything" in the TV drama The Romanoffs (2018).
Miles was born in Wimbledon, London,[1] and lived as a young man in Ashover, Derbyshire,[2] attending Tupton Hall School.
He continued other television work during his tenure in Coupling, appearing in The Forsyte Saga[1] as Montague Dartie (this was the first time Miles acted with Amanda Root) and in Prime Suspect.
[1] Miles appeared in the 2005 BBC television drama Mr Harvey Lights a Candle,[1] playing the part of a teacher taking an unruly party of pupils on a daytrip to Salisbury Cathedral.
[7] In summer 2011, Miles starred as Robert in Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, with Kristin Scott Thomas playing his wife, Emma.
[1] In 2014 Miles played Thomas Cromwell in the RSC version of Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies in Stratford and at the Aldwych Theatre in London.
In the same year, he also had a guest role as Chancellor Tom Pickering in an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror ("Hated in the Nation").
[11] He collaborated with Hilary Mantel on the adaptation of her novel, The Mirror & the Light, into a play at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, in which he also starred.