Jonathan Aris

Jonathan Aris is an English actor born in London on 24 January 1971. He trained at the École Philippe Gaulier and graduated from East 15 Acting School in 1993. His father, Ben Aris, was also an actor. Aris has worked in film, television, theatre and radio, but his best-known screen part is probably Philip Anderson, the Scotland Yard forensic officer in BBC’s Sherlock. Anderson is introduced in “A Study in Pink” as a laboratory colleague who is openly hostile to Sherlock Holmes. The character routinely backs Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan’s suspicion that Sherlock is arrogant and unreliable. That antagonism matters because Anderson is present during police work on several of Sherlock’s cases, rather than serving as a detached background technician. In “The Reichenbach Fall,” he helps sustain the allegation that Sherlock invented crimes for publicity. When Sherlock’s apparent death ends that episode, Anderson later becomes one of the people most consumed by explaining how it might have been faked. In “The Empty Hearse,” set two years later, he brings Lestrade an elaborate theory of Sherlock’s survival and says he has lost his job and marriage. The scene turns a former sceptic into an obsessive believer, while retaining the character’s uneasy relationship with Sherlock. Aris continued as Anderson through Sherlock’s later episodes, including “The Abominable Bride” and “The Final Problem.” Aris also appears in Gareth Edwards’s 2016 Star Wars film Rogue One, credited as Senator Jebel. Jebel sits with the Rebel Alliance leadership on Yavin 4 as the council debates whether to act against the Empire after the Death Star threat becomes clear. The part places Aris in the film’s political argument before Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor leave to seek the Death Star plans on Scarif. His additional feature-film credits include Armando Iannucci’s 2017 satire The Death of Stalin, which depicts the power struggle following Joseph Stalin’s death, and the 2015 science-fiction film The Martian. On television, he appeared in Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World, adapted from Charles Forsman’s comic, and in HBO and Sky’s Chernobyl. In the latter miniseries, writer Craig Mazin dramatizes the 1986 reactor disaster and its aftermath. The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott, follows astronaut Mark Watney after he is stranded on Mars. The End of the F***ing World centres on teenagers James and Alyssa during a flight from home, while Chernobyl reconstructs the Soviet response to the catastrophic explosion at Reactor Number Four.