David Mark Rylance Waters, known professionally as Mark Rylance, is an English actor, theatre
director, and playwright.
He has appeared in films such as Prospero's Books, Institute Benjamenta, and Intimacy,
and has won Olivier Awards, Tony Awards, and a BAFTA Award.
He was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, from 1995 to 2005.
Early life Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent, the son
of Anne and David Waters, both English teachers.
His parents moved to Connecticut in 1962 and Wisconsin in 1969, where his father taught
English at the University School of Milwaukee.
Rylance later attended this school, where he began acting.
His first notable role was in a 1976 production of Hamlet, and he later played Romeo in the
school's production of Romeo and Juliet.
Career Rylance took the stage name of Mark Rylance
because his original choice, Mark Waters, was already taken by someone else registered
with Equity.
He won a scholarship by audition to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
There he trained from 1978–1980 under Hugh Cruttwell, and with Barbara Bridgmont at the
Chrysalis Theatre School in Balham, London.
In 1980, he got his first professional work at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre.
In 1982 and 1983, he performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon
and London.
In 1988, Rylance played Hamlet with the RSC in Ron Daniels' acclaimed production that
toured Ireland and Britain for a year.
The play then ran in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Rylance alternated Hamlet with Romeo
in the production of Romeo and Juliet that inaugurated the rebuilt Swan Theatre in Stratford.
Hamlet toured to the United States for two years.
In 1990, Rylance and Claire van Kampen founded "Phoebus' Cart", their own theatre company.
The following year, the company staged The Tempest on the road in unique, unusual sites.
Also in 1991, Rylance played the lead in Gillies Mackinnon's film The Grass Arena, and won
the BBC 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.
His Benedick won him an Olivier Award for Best Actor.
In 2005, he 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 himself
won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in 2005.
In 2007, Rylance performed in Boeing Boeing in London.
In 2008, he reprised the role on Broadway and subsequently won Drama Desk and Tony Awards
for his performance.
For his acceptance speech for the latter, he recited a work by poet Louis Jenkins.
In 2009, 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, Rylance starred in a revival of David Hirson's verse play La Bête.
The play ran first at London's Comedy Theatre before transferring to the Music Box Theatre
on Broadway, on 23 September 2010.
Also in 2010, he won another Olivier award for best actor in the role of Johnny Byron
in Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre in London.
In 2011, he won his second Tony Award for playing the same role in the Broadway production.
In a 2012 interview, Stephen Fry stated that he believed Rylance to be the best stage actor
in the world.
It was announced in October 2014 that Rylance will star in the title role of The BFG; director
Stephen Spielberg's film adaptation of the children's book by Roald Dahl.
The film is set to begin filming in 2015 with a release scheduled for 2016.
Globe Theatre In 1995, Rylance became the first Artistic
Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a post he filled until 2005.
Rylance directed and acted in every season, in works by Shakespeare and others, notably
in all-male productions of Twelfth Night where he starred as Olivia, and Richard II where
he took the title role.
Under his directorate, new plays were performed at the Globe, the first being Augustine's
Oak 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.
In 2005, Oswald's third play written for the Globe was performed for the first time: The
Storm, an adaptation of Plautus' comedy Rudens – one of the sources of Shakespeare's The
Tempest.
Other historical first nights were organised by Rylance while director of the Globe including
Twelfth Night performed in 2002 at Middle Temple, to commemorate its first performance
there exactly 400 years before, and Measure for Measure at Hampton Court in summer 2004.
In 2013 the Globe Theater brought two all male productions to Broadway starring Rylance
in the role of Olivia in Twelfth Night and the title role in Richard III for a limited
run in repertory.
He won his third Tony Award for his performance as Olivia and was nominated for his performance
as Richard.
Shakespeare controversy On 8 September 2007 Derek Jacobi and Mark
Rylance unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt on the authorship of Shakespeare's work,
after the final matinée of I am Shakespeare, a play in Chichester, Sussex.
The actual author was proposed to be Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford,
Edward de Vere or Mary Sidney.
The declaration named 20 prominent doubters of the past, including Mark Twain, Orson Welles,
John Gielgud and Charlie Chaplin and was made by Shakespeare Authorship Coalition duly signed
online by 300 people to begin new research.
Jacobi and Rylance presented a copy of the document to William Leahy, head of English
at Brunel University, London.
Rylance wrote and starred in The BIG Secret Live—I am Shakespeare—Webcam Daytime Chatroom
Show which toured England in 2007.
Personal life In 1992, Rylance married Claire van Kampen.
The two met while working at the National Theatre.
He has a sister named Susannah, an opera singer and author, and a brother, Jonathan, who works
as a sommelier at Alice Waters' restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, famous for creating
the California cuisine using local organic food.
His stepdaughter is actress Juliet Rylance, who is married to actor Christian Camargo.
His younger stepdaughter, filmmaker Nataasha Van Kampen, died in July 2012 at the age of
twenty-eight, as a result of which Rylance withdrew from his planned participation in
the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.
Rylance has been a supporter of the indigenous rights organisation Survival International
for many years.
He is the creator and director of "We Are One", a fundraiser that took place at the
Apollo Theatre in April 2010.
The evening was a performance of tribal prose and poetry from some of the world's leading
actors and musicians.
He has said: "As a child, I was enriched and inspired by the lives and stories of the world's
tribal peoples.
As an adult, I have also been inspired by the ceaseless work of the organisation Survival
International, and their movement to protect these tribes – from the rainforest of the
Amazon to the icy reaches of the Arctic.
To celebrate 40 years of Survival's work and enjoy the beauty of the spoken word from such
rich oral cultures, I am gathering my friends from the theatre on the set of Jerusalem for
a wonderful spring afternoon of eloquent recitals and stunning images from 'We Are One'."
Rylance is a patron of Peace Direct.
He performed the life and words of Henri, described as "an extraordinarily brave and
charismatic man living in war-torn eastern Congo", during a presentation in New York
City in 2011.
He is also patron of The Outside Edge Theatre Company.
They work from the perspective of creating theatre and drama with people affected by
substance abuse.
It provides theatre interventions in drug and alcohol treatment and general community
facilities throughout Britain, as well as producing professional public theatre productions
that take place in theatres, studio theatres, and art centres.
Rylance believes it to be "proper initiatory old style theatre".
Rylance became a patron of LIFT in 2013.
He said about the festival: "I feel LIFT has done more to influence the growth and adventure
of English theatre than any other organisation we have."
Work Theatre
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Along with Rylance's stage performances, he
has had many appearances at the recently recreated Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in Southwark,
London on the South Bank of the River Thames.
Noted for being one of the finest Shakespearean actors of recent times; his performances at
Shakespeare's Globe are noted for being amongst his finest works.
Filmography Film
Television Bibliography
Mark Rylance: Play – A Recollection in Pictures and Words of the First Five Years of Play
at Shakespeares's Globe Theatre.
Photogr.: Sheila Burnett, Donald Cooper, Richard Kolina, John Tramper.
Shakespeare's Globe Publ., London, UK.
2003.
ISBN 0-9536480-4-4.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare Series by Peter Dawkins:
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in As You Like It.
I.C.
Media Productions, 1998.
Paperback.
ISBN 0-9532890-1-X.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice.
I.C.
Media Productions, 1998.
Paperback.
ISBN 0-9532890-0-1.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.
I.C.
Media Productions, 1999.
Paperback.
ISBN 0-9532890-2-8.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Tempest.
I.C.
Media Productions, 2000.
Paperback.
ISBN 0-9532890-3-6.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.
I.C.
Media Productions, 2002.
Paperback.
ISBN 0-9532890-4-4.
Peter Dawkins.
The Shakespeare Enigma.
Polair, UK.
2004.
Illustrated paperback, 476pp.
ISBN 0-9545389-4-3.
John Abbott.
Improvisation In Rehearsal.
Nick
Hern Books, UK.
2009.
Paperback, 256pp.
ISBN 978-1-85459-523-2.
Dave Patrick.
The View Beyond: Sir Francis Bacon: Alchemy, Science, Mystery.
Deep Books, UK.
2011.
Paperback, 288pp.
ISBN 978-1-905398-22-5.
References
External links Mark Rylance at the Internet Movie Database
Mark Rylance at the Internet Broadway Database Official homepage
Interview with Mark Rylance Mark Rylance performing the Peacebuilder,
Henri Ladyi, Congo doollee.com listing of Rylance's works written
for the stage