57 Facts About Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance has received numerous awards including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards.

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

Mark Rylance 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.

Mark Rylance has 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.

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

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

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

On television, Mark 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 received Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.

Mark 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.

Mark Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent to Anne and David Waters, both teachers of English.

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

Mark 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 Mark Rylance attended.

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

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

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

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

Mark 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.

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

Mark Rylance's Benedick won him an Olivier Award for Best Actor.

Mark Rylance took the leading role as British weapons expert David Kelly in Peter Kosminsky's The Government Inspector, an award-winning Channel 4 production for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in 2005.

In 2007, Mark Rylance wrote and starred in The BIG Secret Live 'I am Shakespeare' Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show, which toured England in 2007.

On 8 September 2007 Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt on the authorship of William Shakespeare's work, after the final matinee performance of The Big Secret Live "I am Shakespeare" Webcam Daytime Chat-Room Show in Chichester.

Jacobi and Mark Rylance presented a copy of the document to William Leahy, head of English at Brunel University London.

In 2009, Mark Rylance won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award Best Actor, 2009 for his role of Johnny Byron in Jerusalem written by Jez Butterworth at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

In 2010, Mark Rylance starred in a revival of David Hirson's verse play La Bete.

Mark Rylance won his third Tony Award for his performance as Olivia and was nominated for his performance as Richard III.

Mark Rylance played Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, BBC Two's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's historical novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Mark Rylance was featured as the castaway on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs on 15 February 2015.

Mark Rylance co-starred in the biographical drama Bridge of Spies, released in October 2015, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, Amy Ryan, and Alan Alda.

Mark Rylance, who had previously turned down a role offered by Spielberg in the 1987 film Empire of the Sun, plays Abel and has received unanimous universal acclaim for his performance, with many critics claiming it as the best performance of 2015.

Mark Rylance played the title role in Spielberg's The BFG, a film adaptation of the children's book by Roald Dahl.

In 2016 Mark Rylance co-wrote and starred in the new comedy play Nice Fish at St Ann's Warehouse, New York.

Mark Rylance had a major role in Christopher Nolan's 2017 action-thriller Dunkirk, based on the British military evacuation of the French city of Dunkirk in 1940 during the Second World War.

In 2016, Mark Rylance played James Halliday in Ready Player One, which was directed by Spielberg.

In 2018, Mark Rylance starred in Farinelli and the King on the Broadway stage earning his fifth Tony Award nomination.

Mark Rylance last appeared on stage for the RSC in 1989.

In 2020, Mark Rylance appeared in Aaron Sorkin's legal drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 which premiered on Netflix.

Mark Rylance portrayed William Kunstler, Defense Counsel, co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights, board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and active member of the National Lawyers Guild.

On 8 September 2019, Mark Rylance revealed to AlloCine that he was cast to play Satan in American filmmaker Terrence Malick's upcoming film The Last Planet.

Mark Rylance played the lead role of Dr Semmelweis throughout the run in Bristol.

In 2022, Mark Rylance appeared in The Outfit, an American crime drama thriller film directed by Graham Moore, as an English tailor, or, as he prefers to be called, a "cutter", in Chicago whose main clients are a family of gangsters.

Mark Rylance is married to director, composer and playwright Claire van Kampen, whom he met in 1987 while working on a production of The Wandering Jew at the National Theatre.

Nataasha died in July 2012 at the age of 28, following which Mark Rylance withdrew from his planned participation in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London and was replaced by Kenneth Branagh.

Mark Rylance became patron of the London Bubble Speech Bubbles project in 2015.

Mark Rylance has been a supporter of the indigenous rights organisation Survival International for many years.

Mark Rylance is the creator and director of "We Are One", a fundraiser that took place at the Apollo Theatre in April 2010.

Mark Rylance is a patron of the London-based charity Peace Direct which supports grassroots peacebuilders in areas of conflict, and of the British Stop the War Coalition.

Mark Rylance is a member of the Peace Pledge Union, a network of pacifists in the UK.

Mark Rylance performed the life and words of Henri, a man living in war-torn eastern Congo, during a presentation in New York City in 2011.

Mark Rylance is patron of The Outside Edge Theatre Company.

Mark Rylance has long been an enthusiastic supporter of Conscience: Taxes for Peace not War, which works to change British tax law to allow conscientious objectors the right to redirect that portion of their taxes which would usually go to the military into non-violent methods of conflict resolution.

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Mark Rylance signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election.

Mark Rylance has expressed much interest in crop circles and bonded with Prince Charles over them.

Mark Rylance has received numerous nominations and awards for his performances, including wins at the Tony Awards and BAFTA Awards.

At the 88th Academy Awards, Mark Rylance won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies.

Mark Rylance has received three Tony Awards, making him one of only eight actors to have twice won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, while his nominations for Richard III and Twelfth Night in 2014 make him one of only six to be nominated in two acting categories in the same year.

Mark Rylance was created a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to theatre.