CAST

Joe Harper

Henry Wakefield
Richard Briers

Vernon Spatch
Mark Hadfield

Tom Newman
Nicholas Farrell

Carnforth Greville
Gerard Horan

Terry Du Bois
John Sessions

Fadge
Celia Imrie

Molly
Hetta Charnley

Nina
Julia Sawalha

Margaretta D'Arcy
Joan Collins

Nancy Crawford
Jennifer Saunders

Mortimer
Robert Hines

Tim
James D. White

Mrs. Branch
Ann Davies

Nina's Father
Edward Dewesbury

"I really recognize what Joe is going through at the beginning of this story" says Michael Maloney. "Although I now have a very healthy career, I can remember very vividly what it felt like just before I worked in "Truly, Madly Deeply" when things were not going well for me. But I didn't take a last ditch stand as Joe does. In order to preserve his own sanity and restore his self-esteem, Joe gathers together a cast of people who also think of themselves as losers but of course what happens is that they all find that they have a great deal to offer."

Michael Maloney may admit to slow patches in his early career but his professional debut was at great speed. He studied at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) and was cast two weeks after leaving in "Telford's Change," a hugely popular television series in which he starred with Peter Barkworth and Hannah Gordon.

His television work over the next decade embraced a wide variety of roles. He starred as the divorced father in Channel Four's poignant series "What If It's Raining." He played the hapless William Boot in Gavin Millar's television version of Evelyn Waugh's comic novel "Scoop." He went to the Arctic to play Evans in Central Television's version of Scott's last journey, "The Last Place on Earth." He starred in Jim Henson Productions' Emmy award-winning "Living With Dinosaurs" with Juliet Stevens on and, most recently, starred in the BBC's comic series "Love on a Branch Line."

Maloney's first love is the theatre. He has twice been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and it was his return there to play Prince Hal in Adrian Noble's "Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2" and then Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" that lifted him into the major league of young British actors. His most recent stage triumph was as Lewis Carroll in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" at the Royal National Theatre.

Maloney and Branagh first worked together on the film "Henry V" which Branagh directed and in which Maloney played the Dauphin. His cinematic Shakespeare also includes Rosencrantz in Mel Gibson's "Hamlet" and he will next play Roderigo to Branagh's Iago in Oliver Parker's film of "Othello." In Anthony Minghella's "Truly Madly Deeply" he played, to great effect, the new man in Juliet Stevenson's life. Perhaps his most unusual film performance was the lead role, opposite Helena Bonham Carter, in "La Maschera," in which all the actors were dubbed into Italian.