Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent to Anne (née Skinner) and David Waters, both teachers of English. One of his grandmothers was Irish.[3] Both of his grandfathers were British POWs of the Japanese.[4] His maternal grandfather, Osmond Skinner, spent decades as a banker with the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HSBC). 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.[5]
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.[6] 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.[7]
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.
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.
In 2007 Rylance wrote (co-conceived by John Dove) and starred in The BIG Secret Live 'I am Shakespeare' Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show (A comedy of Shakespearean identity crisis), which toured England in 2007. On 8 September 2007 Derek Jacobi and Rylance unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt on the authorship of William Shakespeare's work, after the final matinée performance of The Big Secret Live "I am Shakespeare" Webcam Daytime Chat-Room Show in Chichester. The actual author of Shakespeare's plays is variously proposed to be Christopher Marlowe; Francis Bacon; Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; or Mary Sidney (Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke). The declaration named 20 prominent doubters of the past, including Mark Twain, John Gielgud, Charlie Chaplin and actor Leslie Howard (later withdrawn from the list), and was made by the 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.
In 2016 the writer Ben Elton delivered a riposte to this "batty" premise in the episode "If You Prick Us, Do We Not Bleed" of his television comedy Upstart Crow.[14] The great but "self-regarding and pretentious" actor Wolf Hall (played by Ben Miller) joins Burbage's acting company to play Shylock. The character Wolf Hall confronts Shakespeare (played by David Mitchell) with the suggestion that he didn't write his own plays; it is a satirical portrait of Rylance and his opinion.[15][16][17]
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 2013 Shakespeare's Globe brought two all-male productions to Broadway, starring Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night and in 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 III.
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. The film is about the 1960 U-2 Incident and the arrest and conviction of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and the exchange of Abel for U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Rylance, who had previously turned down a role offered by Spielberg in the 1987 film Empire of the Sun,[20] plays Abel and has received unanimous universal acclaim for his performance, with many critics claiming it as the best performance of 2015. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted, "As the deeply principled Donovan, Hanks deftly balances earnestness and humour. And Rylance's spirited performance is almost certain to yield an Oscar nomination."[21] David Edelstein from New York cited 'It's Rylance who keeps Bridge of Spies standing. He gives a teeny, witty, fabulously non-emotive performance, every line musical and slightly ironic – the irony being his forthright refusal to deceive in a world founded on lies."[22] Rylance won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and New York Film Critics Circle Award in the Best Supporting Actor categories, as well as receiving Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, among other wins and nominations.
In the 2021 American political satire and science fiction film Don't Look Up, directed by Adam McKay, Rylance portrayed Peter Isherwell, a fictional eccentric billionaire CEO of tech company BASH and top supporter of President Janie Orlean.[32] Delayed by the COVID-19 Pandemic, Dr Semmelweis, a new play, based on the life of Ignaz Semmelweis, written by Stephen Brown and Rylance completed an extended run at the Bristol Old Vic in January and February 2022.[33] Rylance played the lead role of Dr Semmelweis throughout the run in Bristol.[34][35] In 2022 Rylance appeared in The Outfit,[36] an American crime drama thriller film directed by Graham Moore (his directorial debut), as an English tailor, or, as he prefers to be called, a "cutter", in Chicago whose main clients are a family of gangsters.[37] In the same year, he appeared in the Luca Guadagnino-directed horror film Bones & All, which premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2022,[38] and Inland, a British drama directed by Fridtjof Ryder in his directorial debut.[39] In 2023 Rylance once again took the lead role in Dr Semmelweis as it transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End.[40][41] In 2024 he is set to star opposite J. Smith-Cameron the West End revival of Juno and the Paycock at the Gielgud Theatre.[42]
Personal life
Marriage and family
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. They were married in Oxfordshire on 21 December 1989.[43] Through this marriage, he became a stepfather to her two daughters from a previous marriage, actress Juliet Rylance and filmmaker Nataasha van Kampen. Nataasha died in July 2012 at the age of 28, following which Rylance withdrew from his planned participation in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London and was replaced by Kenneth Branagh.[44][45]
Rylance's brother, Jonathan Waters, died in May 2022, following a collision with a vehicle while cycling.[46]
Charity and activism
Rylance became a patron of LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) 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."[47] Rylance became patron of the London Bubble Speech Bubbles project in 2015. "I found a voice through making theatre and am proud to be the patron of Speech Bubbles, which helps hundreds of children to do the same."[48]
Rylance has been a supporter of the indigenous rights organisation Survival International for many years.[49] 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. 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.[50] He is a member of the Peace Pledge Union, a network of pacifists in the UK. He performed the life and words of Henri, a 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.[51] It works 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 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.[52] In November 2019, along with other public figures, 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.[53] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 United Kingdom general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[54][55]
In 2020 he cut ties with the Royal Shakespeare Company due to its sponsorship by BP stating, "I came to the incontrovertible conclusion that BP is neither sincere nor serious in addressing the climate crisis."[56] He has supported making ecocide a crime at the International Criminal Court, saying, "I believe that ecocide law is very much needed and inevitably on its way. It will be an important step towards a deep connection with Nature. It will provide the moral impetus to change 'business as usual' and lead us towards a true humble love for our home, the Earth."[57]
But I've met Prince Charles a number of times now – because he's a great lover of Shakespeare – and I think he's a very conscious person and a good influence. ... Partly, in the end, I felt that because I have an interest in a number of subjects that people try to write off, like Shakespeare's authorship or crop circles – they say I'm insane or not mentally stable – that somehow, a knighthood makes it a little less easy to write me off. [60]
Mark Rylance, Louis Jenkins. Nice Fish: a Play. Grove Press, 4 April 2017. ISBN0-8021268-5-5.
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. ISBN0-9536480-4-4.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare Series by Peter Dawkins (Foreword by Mark Rylance):
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in As You Like It. I.C. Media Productions, 1998. Paperback. ISBN0-9532890-1-X.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. I.C. Media Productions, 1998. Paperback. ISBN0-9532890-0-1.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. I.C. Media Productions, 1999. Paperback. ISBN0-9532890-2-8.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Tempest. I.C. Media Productions, 2000. Paperback. ISBN0-9532890-3-6.
The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Twelfth Night. I.C. Media Productions, 2002. Paperback. ISBN0-9532890-4-4.
Peter Dawkins. The Shakespeare Enigma (Foreword by Mark Rylance). Polair, UK. 2004. Illustrated paperback, 476pp. ISBN0-9545389-4-3.
John Abbott. Improvisation in Rehearsal (Foreword by Mark Rylance). Nick Hern Books, UK. 2009. Paperback, 256pp. ISBN978-1-85459-523-2.
Dave Patrick. The View Beyond: Sir Francis Bacon: Alchemy, Science, Mystery (The View Series) (Foreword by Mark Rylance, Ervin Lazslo, Rose Elliot). Deep Books, UK. 2011. Paperback, 288pp. ISBN978-1-905398-22-5.