Wayne Sleep

Wayne Sleep is a British dancer, director, choreographer, and actor who appeared on the BBC series The Real Marigold on Tour and The Real Full Monty (ITV).

At 5' 2", Sleep is the shortest male dancer admitted into the Royal Ballet School. Because of his diminutive stature, many directors were reluctant to cast him in traditional male lead roles. As a result, many roles were created for him by noted choreographers, including Ashton, MacMillan, de Valois, Layton, Nureyev, Gillian Lynne and Neumeier. Sleep is often chosen for character roles because of his unusual physique. In 1982, Andrew Lloyd Webber adapted his Variations album as the second half of stage show Song and Dance for Sleep. Sleep created the role of Mr Mistoffelees in Lloyd Webber's musical Cats in London's West End at the New London Theatre on 11 May 1981.

In 1973, Sleep established a world record by doing an entrechat-douze, a jump with 12 beats of the feet, on the British television programme Record Breakers.[6] This record still stands. Sleep later jumped from an aircraft for charity, after being challenged by presenter Roy Castle.