Toby Jones' famous actor dad who starred in Emmerdale for years

Toby Jones is the lead star in ITV's new drama

ITV Mr Bates vs Post Office: Toby Jones' famous dad who appeared in Emmerdale for 13 years

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Toby Jones is set to star as the lead in ITV's new drama Mr Bates vs Post Office airing tonight.

Toby is a well-known actor who has appeared in various movies and TV shows. He is most famous for portraying Dobby, the elf, in the Harry Potter film series, Percy Alleline in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Claudius, the announcer for The Hunger Games.

However, it seems that acting runs in his family as his father, Freddie Jones, was also a renowned actor who had an illustrious career in TV, theatre and film. Freddie was a well-known performer and a fixture on British TV for over five decades.

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He made regular appearances in David Lynch films, playing Bytes in The Elephant Man (1980), Thufir Hawat in Dune (1984) and George Kovich in Wild at Heart (1990). Freddie began his acting career in his 30s after initially working as a lab assistant before he decided on a change of careers, reports MyLondon.

After attending Rose Bruford college, he broke into TV in the early 1960s with roles in Z-Cars and The Victorians. He went on to make memorable appearances in Hammer horror films: in 1969 he appeared in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and later as a scientist who meets an unfortunate end in The Satanic Rites of Dracula.

He also worked steadily on TV, with roles including headmaster Scruton in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (1985) and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1987) and TV film Cold Comfort Farm, starring Kate Beckinsale, he played farmhand Adam Lambsbreath.

But it was his role in Emmerdale in later years that he was perhaps best known for; playing Sandy Thomas in the long-running soap. Cast as a former sailor in 2005, his character arrived on his estranged son’s wedding day.

Freddie filmed over 500 episodes of the soap, eventually leaving in 2018. He died in July 2019, aged 91.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office airs on January 1, 2024 on ITV1 and ITVX.

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