Mark Rylance

Sir David Mark Rylance Waters (born 18 January 1960) is an English actor, playwright, and theatre director.

He is known for his roles on stage and screen having received numerous awards including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Olivier Awards, and three Tony Awards.

Rylance's parents moved to the US in 1962; he first moved to Connecticut, then to Wisconsin in 1969, where his father and mother taught English at the University School of Milwaukee, which Rylance attended.

He returned to England in 1978.

Rylance has a sister named Susannah, an opera singer and author, and a deceased brother, Jonathan, who was a sommelier at Chez Panisse.

Rylance took the stage name of Mark Rylance because his given name, Mark Waters, was already taken by someone else registered with Equity.

He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London from 1978 to 1980 under Hugh Cruttwell; and with Barbara and Peter Bridgmont at the Chrysalis Theatre School in Balham, London.

After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he made his professional debut at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in 1980.

In 1980, he gained his first professional work at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre.

In 1982 and 1983, he performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.

In 1988, Rylance played Hamlet with the RSC in Ron Daniels' production that toured Ireland and Britain for a year.

The play then ran in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Hamlet toured the US for two years.

In 1990, Rylance and Claire van Kampen (later his wife) founded "Phoebus' Cart", their own theatre company.

The following year, the company staged The Tempest on the road.

Rylance's film appearances include Prospero's Books (1991), Angels & Insects (1995), Institute Benjamenta (1996), Intimacy (2001) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).

Rylance played the lead in Gillies MacKinnon's film The Grass Arena (1991), and won the Radio Times Award for Best Newcomer.

In 1993, he starred in Matthew Warchus' production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Queen's Theatre, produced by Thelma Holt.

He appeared in the West End productions of Much Ado About Nothing in 1994 and Jerusalem in 2010, winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor for both.

He was the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, between 1995 and 2005.

In 1995, Rylance became the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a post he held until 2005.

Rylance directed and acted in every season, in works by Shakespeare and others, including an all-male production of Twelfth Night, in which he played Olivia, and Richard III in the title role.

Under his directorate, new plays were also performed at the Globe, the first being Augustine's Oak (referring to Augustine of Canterbury and Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England) by Peter Oswald, the writer-in-residence, which was performed in 1999.

A second play by Oswald followed in 2002: The Golden Ass or the Curious Man.

On television, Rylance won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his role as David Kelly in the 2005 Channel 4 drama The Government Inspector and for playing Thomas Cromwell in the 2015 BBC Two mini-series Wolf Hall he also received Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.

Rylance is a patron of the London International Festival of Theatre; of the London-based charity Peace Direct, which supports peace-builders in areas of conflict; and of the British Stop the War Coalition.

Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent to Anne (née Skinner) and David Waters, both teachers of English.

One of his grandmothers was Irish.

Both of his grandfathers were British POWs of the Japanese.

His maternal grandfather, Osmond Skinner, spent decades as a banker with the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank.

After being shot in the stomach during the Battle of Hong Kong, Skinner was recuperating when he witnessed the St. Stephen's College massacre.

He then spent four years in a POW camp.

He was able to survive thanks to HSBC contacts who brought him food.

He has also appeared on Broadway, winning three Tony Awards: two for Best Actor for Boeing Boeing in 2008 and Jerusalem in 2011, and one for Best Featured Actor for Twelfth Night in 2014.

He received Best Actor nominations for Richard III in 2014 and Farinelli and the King in 2017.

He attracted attention for his portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (2015), for which he won the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor.

In 2016, he was included in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.

He subsequently collaborated with Spielberg in the title role of The BFG (2016) adapted from the Roald Dahl children's book and as James Halliday in Ready Player One (2018) based on the novel of the same name.

In 2017 he was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II.

Other notable roles include in the films Dunkirk (2017), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), Don't Look Up (2021), Bones and All (2022) and The Outfit (2022).