James Fleet (born 1954) is a British film, TV, and stage actor. Fleet was born in Wolverhampton to a Scottish mother and an English father, and raised in Aberdeenshire. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the dim-witted Hugo Horton in the BBC situation comedy television series The Vicar of Dibley.
He has starred in numerous film, television, radio and stage productions. He played the role of Lefevre in the 2004 film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, James Dashwood in 1995's Sense and Sensibility and that of Lytton Strachey in the 2003 film Al Sur de Granada (South from Granada). On stage he appeared as Helge in the stage adaptation of Festen in Londons West End.
Between 2000 and 2006, Fleet played the painfully upright and decent Captain Brimshaw in Revolting People, a BBC Radio 4 comedy set in pre-revolutionary America. He also appeared in the radio legal sitcom Chambers, which later moved onto television. As of 2005, he has starred as Duncan Stonebridge MP in the topical radio sitcom The Party Line. In 2007 he was a guest star in one episode of the sitcom Legit.
When Fleet appeared on the quiz show School's Out, it was revealed that one of his teachers at Banff Academy had written in his school report that "[James] is the stupidest boy I have ever had to teach, out of all the stupid boys I have ever had to teach", and that he was the only student in his sixth form not to have been made a prefect. Despite his apparent lack of scholastic ability, he still won the show.
Personal Life James Fleet lives in Sibford Gower with his wife Carol and his two sons.
