Paul Ritter

Paul Ritter was an English actor born Simon Paul Adams in Gravesend, Kent, in 1966. He studied German and French at St John's College, Cambridge, then worked at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg before returning to Britain and adopting the stage name Ritter because another Simon Adams was already registered with the actors' union Equity. His screen credits included Quantum of Solace (2008), Nowhere Boy (2009), Son of Rambow (2007), The Eagle (2011), and Operation Mincemeat (2021), in which he played Bentley Purchase. On television he appeared in Vera from 2011 to 2013, The Hollow Crown, The Last Kingdom, Chernobyl, Resistance, and Belgravia, and from 2011 to 2020 he starred as Martin Goodman in Friday Night Dinner, earning a posthumous BAFTA Television Award nomination in 2021. His stage work brought Olivier and Tony Award nominations, the latter in 2009 for The Norman Conquests. He died in 2021.