Sydney Valentine

Sydney Valentine Nossiter (1865 – 23 December 1919), stage name Sydney Valentine, was an English actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He was President of the Actors' Association and was remembered for negotiating what became the standard contracts for actors in the West End and on tour.

He was born at Kings Norton, Birmingham, in 1865, when his birth was registered with the spelling "Sidney Valentine Nossiter".

Valentine's stage debut was at Dover on 26 December 1882, with the Charles Dickens Repertoire Company. He then took the place of Sydney Paxton in a fit-up company in Wales, and later in 1883 was playing a stock season in Inverness, where he met Paxton, who became a friend. In 1885 they both joined the Compton Comedy Company, and Valentine remained with Compton for two years, then was hit by a severe illness which prevented him from acting for another two years.

In 1897 he appeared in J. M. Barrie's The Little Minister at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Westminster, playing the part of Rob Dow. He was in George Fleming's The Light That Failed in the West End from February to April 1903, but was not available for the later Broadway production. In 1904 he played Justice Whortle in W. S. Gilbert's The Fairy's Dilemma at the Garrick Theatre. In 1908 he appeared as David Wylie in another Barrie play, What Every Woman Knows, at the Duke of York's Theatre. In 1910 he was one of the stars of John Galsworthy's play Justice at the Duke of York's Theatre, and in September 1911 opened in Henry Arthur Jones's The Ogre. In 1917 he played Green in a Royal Command Performance of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, before King George V and the Emperor and Empress of Germany.

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