David Oakes

Oakes was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1983, the son of a Church of England canon.

Oakes grew up in Fordingbridge, Hampshire. He was head boy at Bishop Wordsworth's School, in Salisbury. His first job was backstage at the Salisbury Playhouse. Oakes graduated with a First in English Literature from the University of Manchester. He graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2007. Oakes began his career at Shakespeare's Globe, before taking roles at the Almeida Theatre and the Old Vic. Since appearing at Shakespeare's Globe at the outset of his career, Oakes has frequently performed in numerous rehearsed readings as part of their "Read Not Dead" initiative, including their landmark 200th reading of Philip Massinger's A New Way To Pay Old Debts; Oakes played Wellborn alongside a cast including Benjamin Whitrow, Alan Cox, and Nicholas Rowe.

In 2006, Oakes performed a 90-minute abridged version of Much Ado About Nothing as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Complete Works" festival along with his final year graduates from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He alternated between playing Claudio and Verges alongside fellow graduate Matt Barber.

Oakes was present to accept the Jury Prize at the 2011 Romy Awards in Vienna alongside Donald Sutherland and Natalia Wörner.

Oakes came to prominence when he played the villainous William Hamleigh in the television miniseries The Pillars of the Earth (2010). The following year, Oakes was cast in the television series The Borgias (2011), airing on Showtime. Whilst shooting the second season, Oakes performed a cameo in the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End (2012).

Between 2010 and 2013, Oakes had several roles playing villains on television—such as William Hamleigh in The Pillars of the Earth (2010), Juan Borgia in The Borgias (2011), and George, Duke of Clarence in The White Queen (2013). When he played Mr. Darcy in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice at Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 2013, he said, "I've been playing bad guys back to back, so Darcy's a bit of an antidote!" In 2014, he starred in the original West End production of Shakespeare in Love at the Noël Coward Theatre as Christopher Marlowe. Oakes was nominated for both WhatsOnStage and Broadway World awards for his performance in Shakespeare in Love in 2015.

Other performances between 2008 and 2013 for "Read Not Dead" include an early quarto edition of Henry IV: Part One as Prince Hal opposite Benjamin Whitrow's Falstaff, Calderon's Life is a Dream (La Vida Es Sueno) as Segismundo, Taming Of A Shrew as Aurelias, The Spanish Tragedy as Lorenzo, The Return from Parnassus as Ingenioso, Bassianus as Geta, Gorboduc as a "smooth, almost oily" Arostus, John Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis as Montanus, and Thomas Middleton's Your Five Gallants as Tailby.

In a return to TV period dramas in 2015, Oakes guest-starred in both the third season of Endeavour with Shaun Evans and in BBC's limited series The Living and the Dead with Colin Morgan. He played Prince Ernest, brother of Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert, in the 2016 ITV series Victoria. The role reunited Oakes with his Trinity co-star Tom Hughes, and Pillars of the Earth co-star Rufus Sewell.

In 2017, Oakes starred in the film adaptation of Albert Sánchez Piñol's novel Cold Skin, directed by Xavier Gens and co-starring Ray Stevenson and Aura Garrido. He also starred as Thomas Novachek in the London West End premiere of David Ives's play Venus in Fur at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. This production was directed by Patrick Marber and co-starred Natalie Dormer as Vanda.

Oakes played Earl Godwin in Vikings: Valhalla, the spin-off of the show Vikings, for Netflix.

Oakes set up a theatre company called Dog Ate Cake with a long-term theatrical collaborator Henry Bell.

In 2015 Oakes starred as Banquo in a charity fundraiser for the Shakespeare Schools Festival. The event was largely improvised by the actors and lawyers involved, but based on a framework written by Jonathan Myerson. The cast also included Christopher Eccleston as Macbeth, Haydn Gwynne as Lady Macbeth, Paterson Joseph as MacDuff, and Pippa Bennett-Warner as one of the Weird Sisters. The event interrupted the events of the original play following the death of Duncan, placing Macbeth on trial for murder. Oakes, Joseph, and Gwynne appeared as witnesses for the prosecution while Eccleston and Bennett-Warner played witnesses for the defence. The event was overseen by High Court Judge Sir Michael Burton; the QCs were John Kelsey-Fry, Jonathan Laidlaw, Dinah Rose, and Ian Winter, and the foreman of the jury was Jeremy Paxman.

In 2019, Oakes played Hamlet at Shakespeare's Rose Theatre, York. The Stage wrote that he "plays Hamlet with natural ease: he is clearly comfortable with the cadences of the language and he conveys meaning well." Both WhatsOnStage and the British Theatre Guide praised Oakes' performance, particularly his rapport with the audience, despite the production's more light-hearted take on the play.