Name	Matthew Macfadyen
Height	6' 3"
Naionality	British
Date of Birth	17 October 1974
Place of Birth	Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, UK
Famous for

“I would hate not to do a play every couple of years. I think it's not me. I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.” Matthew Macfadyen.

Graduating from the RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), Matthew Macfadyen quickly became a well-known actor on the British stage as he joined the stage company Cheek by Jowl, for whom he played Antonio in The Duchess of Malfi (1995), Charles Surface in The School for Scandal (1998) and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1998). His excellent stage work brought him a nomination for the RSC Ian Charleston award for “best classical actor under 30” in 1998.

That same year, the stage actor got his major TV breakthrough as Hareton Earnshaw, the son of Ian Shaw's Hindley, in London Weekend Television production of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights, alongside Sarah Smart and Robert Cavanah. He subsequently nabbed more TV works, starring on BBC One's acclaimed war drama about a group of British Blue helmets serving in a peacekeeping operation of the UNPROFOR in Vitez, Bosnia, in 1992, Warriors (1999; with Damian Lewis and Ioan Gruffudd), and on BBC Television's four-episode miniseries based on a 1875 scathing satirical novel by Anthony Trollope, "The Way We Live Now," (2001; with David Suchet and Shirley Henderson), portraying Felix, the gambling son of the Carburys. In 2002, "The Way We Live Now" won the Best Drama Serial category at the British Academy Television Awards. He also garnered good reviews for his starring role in BBC Two network's acclaimed drama film, Perfect Strangers (2001; a.k.a. Almost Strangers). The drama, also starring Michael Gambon and Lindsay Duncan, received two Royal Television Society awards and a Peabody Award.

Macfadyen also developed career on the big screen. In 2001, he was cast as a battle-scarred submarine commander in Michael Apted's film set in World War II and based on the novel by Robert Harris, Enigma, starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows and Jeremy Northam.

From 2002 to 2004, TV viewers remembered Macfadyen played Tom Quinn, the Senior Case Officer (Section B) at MI5's Counter-Terrorism Department, in BBC One popular and critically success spy drama "Spooks." The series later aired under the title “MI-5” on the A&E Network in the U.S.

During his “Spooks” years, Macfadyen starred in the fact-based BBC TV drama about New Labour’s rise to power and the landslide victory of 1997, The Project (2003), in which he costarred as idealistic Labour Special Advisor Paul Tibbenham, along with Naomie Harris and Paloma Baeza. He also returned to the wide screen to star in writer-director Brad McGann's New Zealand film inspired by the novel by Maurice Gee, In My Father's Den, opposite Emily Barclay and Miranda Otto. In the film, he earned rave reviews for portraying Paul Prior, a prize-winning war journalist returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary.

“I find Darcy very sympathetic, I find it heartbreaking that he's seen as very haughty and proud - and he is those things - but he's a young man who is still grieving for his parents. He's from an ancient family and has this huge responsibility, but it seemed to me that he's still trying to work out who he is and how to be in the world. I found that very interesting, and I found him very sympathetic.” Matthew Macfadyen (on approaching the character of Mr. Darcy for Pride and Prejudice).

Macfadyen was catapulted toward international recognition in 2005 when he joined director Joe Wright in his film version of Jane Austen's 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice. He portrayed the protagonist Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy gentleman and the owner of Pemberley, a large estate in Derbyshire, England, opposite Kiera Knightley in her Oscar nominated role as Elizabeth Bennet.

“I think looking at it now, Darcy would seem much more snobbish in our understanding of the word than he would then. To somebody like Darcy, it would have been a big deal for him to get over this difference in their status, and to be able to say to Lizzie that he loved her. We would think it was incredibly snobbish and elitist, but it wasn't for him. It would have been a big admission, and he would have found it very vulgar. It's a bigger divide than it would have been then is what I'm saying.” Matthew Macfadyen (when asked if modern viewers will view Mr. Darcy differently).

Afterward, Macfadyen went back on stage at the Royal National Theatre to play Prince Hal (May-August 2005) in “Henry 1V Parts 1 & 2.” The stage production, helmed by Nicholas Hytner, gave Macfadyen a chance to reunite with his boyhood hero and Perfect Strangers co-star, Sir Michael Gambon in the lead role of Falstaff.

Recently, Macfadyen played the lead role of Gabriel Hunter, an overzealous priest returns to his hometown and ends up battling against his brother to take over the local ministry, in Brian Kirk’s small independent film filmed in Northern Ireland, Middletown (2006), alongside Daniel Mays, Eva Birthistle and Gerard McSorley. He will soon complete his upcoming film project, a drama comedy by director Frank Oz, Death at a Funeral, in which Macfadyen’s character Daniel is the sane centre of increasingly farcical events surrounding a family funeral.