1. John Rhys-Davies was born on 5 May 1944 and is a Welsh actor known for portraying Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Sallah in the Indiana Jones franchise.
33 Facts About John Rhys-Davies
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John Rhys-Davies has received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, with one win, and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
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John Rhys-Davies is known for his extensive voice work including Cats Don't Dance, Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists, SpongeBob SquarePants, and TripTank.
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John Rhys-Davies gained acclaim for his television roles as Macro in I, Claudius, Vasco Rodrigues in Shogun, and Michael Malone in The Untouchables.
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John Rhys-Davies was born in Salisbury on 5 May 1944, the son of Welsh parents.
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John Rhys-Davies's mother, Phyllis Jones, was a nurse, while his father, Rhys Davies, was a mechanical engineer and colonial officer.
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John Rhys-Davies was educated at independent Truro School in Cornwall and then at the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first 105 students admitted and became a co-founder of its drama club.
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John Rhys-Davies appeared sporadically on UK television in the early 1970s, including his role as the gangster "Laughing Spam Fritter" opposite Adam Faith in Budgie.
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Later, John Rhys-Davies played Praetorian officer Naevius Sutorius Macro in I, Claudius.
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John Rhys-Davies then began to appear more frequently, and not just in the UK, with roles as a Portuguese navigator Rodrigues in the 1980 television miniseries Shogun, based on the novel by James Clavell.
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In 1989, John Rhys-Davies played Marvel Comics character Kingpin in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.
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John Rhys-Davies starred in another Clavell adaption, Noble House, set in Hong Kong, where Rhys-Davies plays Ian Dunross' corporate enemy, Quillan Gornt.
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John Rhys-Davies has since appeared in numerous television shows and miniseries, including Agent Michael Malone in the 1993 remake of the 1950s television series The Untouchables as well as a leading role in the television series Sliders as Professor Maximillian Arturo from 1995 to 1997.
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John Rhys-Davies appeared in Reilly, Ace of Spies in 1983, made several appearances in Star Trek: Voyager as a holodeck version of Leonardo da Vinci, starred as an ally of James Bond in The Living Daylights, and appeared in the film One Night with the King.
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John Rhys-Davies has played the character Porthos in two separate projects; a two-part episode of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, and the Hallmark Channel film La Femme Musketeer.
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John Rhys-Davies appears in the full-motion video cut scenes of computer games including Ripper, Dune 2000, and the Wing Commander series.
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In 2004, John Rhys-Davies narrated The Privileged Planet, a documentary that makes the case for intelligent design.
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John Rhys-Davies provided narration in the MTV series Wildboyz around this time.
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In 2013, John Rhys-Davies appeared in the family history programme Coming Home, in which he discovered information about his grandfather's life in the Carmarthenshire coal mines.
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In 2014, John Rhys-Davies joined the cast of the television show Metal Hurlant Chronicles to play Holgarth, an immortal alchemist.
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John Rhys-Davies played Sallah in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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John Rhys-Davies reprised the role of Sallah in two subsequent Indiana Jones films.
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John Rhys-Davies appeared as the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
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Therefore, although his character was supposed to be short, John Rhys-Davies was properly in proportion compared to the hobbit actors.
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John Rhys-Davies is the only one of the nine Fellowship of the Ring actors who did not receive a tattoo of the word "nine" written in the Tengwar script; his stunt double, Brett Beattie, was offered the tattoo instead as John Rhys-Davies was disinclined to get one himself and Beattie had spent so much time as his double that he almost received co-credit.
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John Rhys-Davies suffered severe reactions to the prosthetics used during filming, and his eyes sometimes swelled shut.
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John Rhys-Davies lent his vocal talents to the games Freelancer and Lords of Everquest and the game Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, which was released with his narration on a CD-ROM version in 1995.
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John Rhys-Davies had a voice role on Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance as the character Jherek, and narrated a documentary called The Glory of Macedonia.
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In 2004, John Rhys-Davies was the unknowing subject of an internet prank that spread false rumours in several mainstream media sources that he was scheduled to play the role of General Grievous in Star Wars Episode III.
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In 2011, he presented KJB: The Book That Changed The World, which features John Rhys-Davies reading diverse snippets from the King James Version.
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John Rhys-Davies voice was recorded for some of the callouts in the 1993 Williams SuperPin Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure.
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John Rhys-Davies married Suzanne Wilkinson in December 1966, and they had two sons together.
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John Rhys-Davies was a radical leftist as a university student in the 1960s, but changed his views after heckling Margaret Thatcher, who he said "shot down the first two hecklers in such brilliant fashion that [he] decided [he] ought for once to shut up and listen".