Ilan Goodman (born 1981 or 1982) is an English actor and audio producer. He worked in British theatre, film and television—including the film The Imitation Game (2014) and the UK premieres of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter, Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel and Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews—before moving into radio and podcast production.
As a producer his work includes the BBC Radio 4 science series Curious Cases and Uncharted with Hannah Fry. With the geneticist Adam Rutherford he received a Gold Award at the 2023 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards for the documentary series Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics. He is the son of the actor Henry Goodman.
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Early life and education
Goodman was born in South Africa to a South African mother and an English father, the actor Henry Goodman. He grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. His mother, Sue Parker, is a choreographer and his sister, Carla Goodman, is a theatre designer. He studied experimental psychology and philosophy at the University of Oxford, trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 2007, and later took a master's degree in the history and philosophy of science at University College London.
Career
Acting
Goodman acted for around a decade in theatre, film and television. On stage he made his National Theatre debut in Danton's Death (2010) and appeared in the Royal Court revival of Arnold Wesker's Chicken Soup with Barley (2011) and the UK premieres of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter (2012) and Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel (2014), both at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, Bath.
From 2014 to 2016, he played Liam in the UK premiere of Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews, directed by Michael Longhurst, which opened at Bath and transferred to the West End. In 2016, he appeared in Good Canary at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, directed by John Malkovich. His screen appearances include the films Diana (2013), A Long Way Down (2014), The Imitation Game (2014), Stratton (2017) and The Foreigner (2017)—and the television series Call the Midwife and the Yes, Prime Minister revival.
Audio production
Goodman later moved into audio production. From 2018 he created and hosted Nous, an independent interview podcast about the mind and consciousness, which ran for 13 episodes. He produced Risky Talk with David Spiegelhalter at the University of Cambridge's Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication—and science programmes for the BBC, including CrowdScience for the BBC World Service and, at the BBC's Audio Science Unit, several series of Curious Cases with Hannah Fry and Dara Ó Briain and the series Uncharted with Hannah Fry.
With Adam Rutherford he produced Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics (2022), a series on the history of the eugenics movement, for which the two received a Gold Award in the audio category of the 2023 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. His other work includes Science Weekly for The Guardian, Azeem Azhar's Exponential View, the Tortoise Media series Dr Anti-Vax (2023) and the documentary series Exile.