Robert Guy Bathurst was born in Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), on 22 February 1957 to Philip Charles Metcalfe Bathurst, a descendant of politician Charles Bathurst and kinsman of the Earls Bathurst and Viscounts Bledisloe, and his wife Gillian (née Debenham). His father was a major in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War and was working in West Africa as a management consultant. His mother was a physiotherapist. They had two other children, Nicholas and Charlotte. The family lived in Ghana until 1959, when they moved to Ballybrack, Dublin, Ireland. Bathurst and his brother attended two schools in Dublin – the Holy Child School in Killiney and a school in Ballsbridge – before being sent to Headfort, a preparatory school in Kells, County Meath. He compared the time he and his brother, who were Catholics, spent at the Anglican boarding school to Lord of the Flies; "we were incarcerated in a huge, stinking, Georgian house, where we were treated very brutally". In 1966, the family moved to England and Bathurst was sent to board at Worth School in Sussex. At the age of 13, he began acting in minor skits and revues and read old copies of Plays and Players magazine, "studying floor plans of theatres and reading about new theatres being built". He had first become interested in acting when his family saw a pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin and he watched actors waiting for their cues in the wings. Bathurst left Worth at the age of 18 to read law at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He spent much of his time there performing in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Hugh Laurie, Rory McGrath and Emma Thompson. From 1977 to 1978, he was the secretary of the group and, from 1978 to 1979, he was the president. Among the Footlights Revues in which he participated were Stage Fright in 1978, which he also co-wrote and Nightcap in 1979. He also directed and appeared in the Footlights pantomime Aladdin as Widow Twankey during the 1978–79 season. He took the Bar Vocational Course at the University of Law, in London, which allowed him to go on to become a practising barrister, but stuck to acting instead. Acting career Early career After leaving Cambridge, Bathurst spent a year touring Australia in the Footlights Revue Botham, The Musical, which he described as "a bunch of callow youths flying round doing press