Name	Matthew Rhys
Height	5' 11"
Naionality	British
Date of Birth	8 November 1974
Place of Birth	Cardiff, Wales, UK
Famous for

Born 8 November 1974 in the historic city of Cardiff, South Glamorgan, South Wales. Father Glyn Evans (headmaster), mother Helen Evans (teaches special needs children) and an older sister Rachel Evans, who is a BBC broadcast journalist . His parents were strict when necessary, but also gave him free rein to live his life. He would not call himself a bad child, but did the ‘typical setting fire to my mum’s carpet’. He looks back at his childhood affectionately 'through the old rose-tinted spectacles'.

He was educated in the Welsh language at Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Melin Gruffydd, Whitchurch, Cardiff where he met Ioan Gruffudd.

Matthew: “We didn't get off to the best of starts. It was a snowball fight. He ended up running away and I ended up going after him and hacking him to the floor. I tripped him and he started to cry and I panicked because I'd made someone cry.”

Ioan: “I was so embarrassed about this, because he was a year younger than me.”

Inspite of this incident Matthew and Ioan remained friends outside school and attended chapel and Sunday School together.

First movie Matthew recalls seeing was Flash Gordon(1980). He believes that his first record ever bought was Adam and the Ants – Stand and deliver – (1981) because the video was so cool! He had his first famous person crush on Daisy Duke from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’.

Considering that his father's family were farmers, his mother's people lived near the sea, it is only natural that he wanted to be a farmer. "Don't ask me why. I thought maybe I'd be a farmer. That was another silly notion. I think I'd last about five minutes, being a farmer."

But when he was 10 or 11 years old, he saw the movie that inspired him: ‘Look back in anger’ with Richard Burton. His father told him Richard Burton was Welsh “…and I realized it was possible to be Welsh and make it in the filmworld.”

He than transferred to a Welsh-speaking co-ed comprehensive Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf where Ioan also went to.

His first job was a paper round, but it was short-lived, because his bike got stolen. His walls were covered with Army posters. "Oh God, this is stupid, but I thought I'd be in the armed forces," he says, but fortunately he changed his mind.

He liked sport. Rugby off course, but when he decided he was not good enough he went for ice hockey, but that turned out too expensive, so he moved to street hockey instead.

Had his first kiss at age 16, first sex at age 17. First falling in love at age 18.

"I was always the lead in the school play, mainly because I was the only boy who did drama."

At seventeen, he played the lead role of Elvis Presley in a school musical, “I loved it. I had to sing some songs and thought I'd like to apply for drama school. I still love Elvis.”

According to himself in school he did ‘just enough to get by’. When he left school he applied to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (RADA). and was accepted after an audition that won him the first annual free grant, the Patricia Rothermere Scholarship in 1993.

He moved in with Ioan who had been accepted at RADA the year before. At RADA he had to unlearn before he could learn a thing. “I was told in week two to stop rubbing my nose when speaking. I had no idea I was doing it. It was not really student life as you expect. I didn’t get to know anywhere in London apart from the Tube journey- Kilburn to college – for three years. When we had to pretend to be amoebas, I thought ‘shit, what am I doing here?’ – but that did not happen very often. It was a shock. I was expecting a university lifestyle. It was three years of six days a week in college. Six long days. Doing voice, singing, fencing and acrobatics. At times, it was slightly psychoanalytical. They're big into the Method. On my supposed day off Sunday I would have to learn scripts."

During his time at RADA, 1996, Rhys made his film debut with Sian Phillips and Steven Mackintosh in House of America. He got that job also because Ioan was auditioning for it, and Ioan told the casting-director that Matthew would be perfect for the role. So Matthew auditioned for the film and landed the part of Boyo, the son of a dysfunctional family living in the South Wales Valleys, who watches his sister Gwenny (Lisa Palfrey) and brother Sid (Steven Mackintosh) lose themselves in a drug and alcohol enduced fantasy world, while his unstable mother (Sian Phillips) sinks into madness and he discovers the secret of his father’s disappearance. Sian Philips was nominated for a BAFTA for best actress in 1996, for her part of the mother. "It was a dark piece, but a great learning curve," Matthew says.

He also appeared in Back-Up, the BBC police series about the operational support units Hooli Vans, as PC Steve Higson. This was a series of 13 episodes about the lives and action packed adventures of the nine men and women aboard a police Operational Support Unit (OSU) van that is responsible for going anywhere and doing anything in support of operations carried out by other branches of the West Midlands Police. After three months filming in Birmingham in and out of police vans, Matthew was pleased to have the chance to return to Cardiff.

Upon his return in Cardiff he plays in his own language in the Welsh film Bydd yn Wrol (Be Brave) together with Daniel Evans, Menna Trussler and Islwyn Morris. For this movie he won Best Actor award at the Welsh BAFTA's in 1997

This movie was made in 1997 and is a comic, moving portrait of a community that learns to work together and the individuals who learn about themselves in the process, when a group of old-age pensioners must fight to save their municipal hall from developers and corrupt councilors. They are joined by their teenage neighbors. And apparently it also involves the singer Tom Jones

February 1997:

Along comes Cardiff East. His first play. He had just graduated from RADA, when he started it. Cardiff East raises essential questions: What is family value? What does it feel like to be an immigrant in your own country? Uncompromising and desperately real, with an undercurrent of ironic humour, Cardiff East builds towards an inexorable climax, which combines hope and tragedy in equal parts.

Matthew won critical acclaim for his role as the young Tommy who is enjoying a gay liaison with Neil. The play shocked audiences with its gay nude scenes. “However many times you strip you clothes off on the stage, it doesn't get any easier. The worst was when we took the show to my hometown of Cardiff. All my family and friends came to see me - and they saw everything. It was very embarrassing.”

Followed by “Grace Note” in July 1997 co-starring Geraldine McEwan (Grace), Holly Aird (Ellie), Jonathan Cullen (Daniel), Emma Amos (Jennifer) and Neil Stuke (Jack). It is a play about a woman with Alzheimer, Grace, and her daughter-in-law, Ellie, who seems to understand Grace's need to dwell on the past and her passion for the soprano Joan Sutherland. The family gathers round to protect its inheritance, but the senility is cunning: Grace has plans of her own. Her affections fall on the resident outsiders with whom she claims to have some empathy: Her son Daniel's Australian wife, Ellie (Holly Aird), whom he married in order to grant her a work permit and his young Welsh boyfriend, Nick (Matthew Rhys), whose musical skills extend to playing "Stairway to Heaven" on the guitar.

He continued on the stage and played Pierre in One More Wasted Year, about two young men, in their late twenties they already seem too old for a youth-obsessed world; who inhabit a world of cafes and rented bed-sits.

Followed by the part of Yanne in Stranger's House, with also Paul Bettany. A play about a group of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who fled at various times to Germany, it is a play about values. Yanne, a young Macedonian fleeing military service, turns up seeking sanctuary at the tobacconist's shop run by his father's bosom friend Hristo in an un-named, godforsaken German town. Hristo is revered as a hero back home, having supposedly escaped from Yugoslavia when the high ideals of the Tito revolution turned sour. If Yanne hopes for a warm welcome and sympathy over his own desertion, he's soon disillusioned. Hristo is a bitter, chain-smoking man, his crushed wife Terese is a small-time prostitute; his daughter, Agnes, is married to the uncaring mechanic Jorg, who crippled her in a car crash. Secrets burn beneath the surface of every relationship, and Yanne's decision to flee the coming war in his homeland is treated with the deepest suspicion.

He had a small part in Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes and Christopher Eccleston, but that part ended on the editing floor. Although the rumour goes that he is still somewhere to be seen in the movie.

And he was as unlucky with the following film, Heart , a movie starring Saskia Reeves, Kate Hardie, Christopher Eccleston and Rhys Ifans.. He got paid, but he was never seen on the screen. Allthough he is credited as playing Sean McCardle

In January 1998, Rhys went to New Zealand to star in Green Stone, a colonial costume drama for television, about a love story played out on a grand scale against impossible odds. The sweeping saga of a woman caught in a love during New Zealand's turbulent birth as a nation in the mid-1800s. Greenstone enables two worlds to meet - the English and the Maori. As soon as Matthew read the script for Greenstone he says he loved the ideas - especially the meeting of two different cultures. Rhys stars as Sam Markham - a young, bold, optimistic gunsmith who is the product of the Victorian industrial hinterland. He falls under the spell of Marama (Simone Kessell), the daughter of one of the most powerful and feared Maori warrior chiefs, and his love for her places him at the centre of a brutal blood clash between Maori and pakeha. "It's a very rich story with so many things in it. It's a love story, it's got wars and it’s historical. I loved the thought of riding and the shooting. It's a real adventure story as well," he says.

According to Matthew his character is basically an angry young man, but there are parts of him that he relates to well’. "He's tired of the aristocratic oppressive rulers of England, he wants to get out and make a new world for himself. He's very interested in change and progress - he hates the suffocating feeling that heritage and ritual imposes on him," he says. "He's also very idealistic and very determined in what he wants. He's a believer and he'll follow through to the end. I can be like that."

Acting with children was a new experience for Matthew who at times says he nearly lost his patience. "It's been very trying - you definitely have to have a lot of patience," he says.

He found acting with animals was more fun. "There's been a lot on the horses - I loved it. The wagon driving and so on was fantastic. I've done a little but not much so it was a real baptism of fire."

He also takes the part of Ray Smith in “Whatever happened to Harold Smith?” A small film situated in the ‘70’s in which he plays the brother of a boy who discovers that his (their) father has a special gift. It stars amongst others Tom Courtenay, Stephen Fry and Lulu.

In 1999 he is in Italy for eight weeks filming with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange in a new movie called Titus, in which he and Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers played the sadistic sons of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, who was played by Jessica Lange. Working on Titus was the most physically demanding role of Matthew Rhys's career to date - he was suspended naked upside down before his character met a gory demise.

"Titus was a great experience, purely because of being able to watch the 'master' - Anthony Hopkins - at work. That was a hell of a frightening experience because it was my first big film with Hopkins and Jessica Lange, a Shakespeare as well and a very extreme character I had to play. Demetrius was a rapist psychopath with blond hair and tattoos. So it was a bit intimidating but a hell of an experience. It's quite a diverse film - it's not your average cinema film. You spend years with your mates watching Hopkins’ films, analysing every minute of what he does, then you find yourself acting with him. It was really weird. What I was most excited about was finding out how he does it, but you don't. He's doing his Tommy Cooper impressions right up until "action", then he's in floods of tears until "cut", and straight back into Tommy Cooper..

He is an amazing mimic who can do lots of different voices - he did his Tommy Cooper and Marlon Brando impressions. So working with him scared the hell out of me. In the film, he ends up slitting my throat as I hang naked from the ceiling. Not much acting went on there. I was terrified!"

Titus received mixed reviews. But in all, Matthew looked back on it with a positive attitude: “One minute I was in Cardiff, the next I was at the Cannes Film Festival in front of 250 journalists sitting next to Jessica Lange talking about Titus Andronicus. From Cardiff to Cannes, I'd never have believed it!”

Trivia: His most embarrassing scene in this movie would be: “I had to film the orgy scene with an Italian gymnast who couldn’t speak a word of English. We had to simulate love making while floating in a small boat, but we couldn’t stay on it and we had the director shouting at us across the swimming pool. It was just awfull.”

Trivia: Although there is ONE thing about Anthony Hopkins that Matthew did not understand: "I got on well with him - but why he has taken American citizenship I will never understand. I could never do that - my roots are too deep."

Trivia: He would love to make a film with Robert De Niro. “because I always believed what he does, I just love him, he's great.” Favorite director would be Martin Scorsese.

In 2000 Matthew suddenly becomes a more famous name. He is going to be on stage opposite Kathleen Turner in a new adaptation of “The Graduate”. Rhys stars as Benjamin Braddock, the role made famous in the film by Dustin Hoffmann. He has a torrid affair with Turner's character Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's employer. "Benjamin is such a great character to play; this disillusioned guy who's worked really hard for four years to get a degree, mainly to please his parents, and then thinks, 'What about me?' He just wants to feel alive . His is a rite of passage story that fulfills a lot of young men's fantasies. The story is set in California in 1964, which was not in the throes of the Swinging Sixties as we think of them now. The values and morals of the Fifties were still prevalent then, which made such an affair much more shocking. It's harder to generate that kind of response today but I still think the play can have enormous shock value."

Matthew admits that he never saw the movie with Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. And he would not see it until after the play is finished, because of the pressure that it brings. He would rather find his own performance: “I might be drawn into doing it in a certain way just to be different.” What mostly catches everyone’s attention: Kathleen Turner will appear nude on the stage. The media descended on them.

Kathleen Turner had a say in the casting. There were several auditions before he was chosen for the part. After quite a few auditions, she flew over in November and they lined up four boys for her to see, she read with Matthew and a few other actors, but Matthew got it because of the chemistry she felt with him. So he must have done OK..

At the audition, he felt 'blind panic', daunted at the thought of the naked scenes between himself and the Hollywood star. "We did the seduction scene and I didn't have to do much acting really, so I just blushed and stuttered my way through it, and felt very embarrassed . . . so it worked well. She was lovely - I felt quite intimidated but excited at the same time. For the first 40 minutes I was a dribbling mess. She was brilliant: she had been there, done that. She's a real taskmaster and a complete perfectionist. She works very hard and really cares about the project she's doing, working on it over again until she's entirely happy with it. I liked that about her."

Rehearsals for The Graduate started in February and it opened in March 2000. It would run for 12 weeks. Almost every night it was sold out.

He was intimidated by Turner at first, but three weeks into rehearsal, that has subsided. "It's like having a game of tennis with a legendary player - it raises your game. I'm relishing the challenge, which sounds like a cliché, but it is true."

Kathleen was also impressed with Matthew: " He can really act. You know if an actor is good or not and he is good. I call it dancing, when an actor really starts to move with you and respond to you it is kind of a dance, where one leads and the other follows, and then they change over and Matthew started dancing." The chemistry was evident straight away. Matthew Rhys and Kathleen Turner were promoting their new stage production of The Graduate. As they posed for cameras they looked every inch the generation-gap lovers they are due to play. "There is chemistry between us. You just have to get on with it. She is very easy to get on with. The chemistry is very professional, strictly professional."

It was impossible not to be conscious of the audience build-up to That Scene every night. "The scene comes very early in the play, thankfully, which is good because, after all the hype in the press, it causes so much expectation in the audience. It was good to get it out of the way early every night. And, you know, it's only seconds. Just the drop of a towel. It's incredible in the 21st century that a scene like that, and one so brief, can cause such a fuss. That was a real eye-opener," he states. "And not because my co-star got naked for a few seconds. What was interesting was seeing how the media works with such a scene, milking the titillation factor for all its worth. It made me realise just how the press works, and how it can exaggerate any situation to make a story. You realise that everything is really spin in this day and age, where the media has blurred the line between real news and entertainment."

Curiously enough, Rhys got to keep his pants on for the scene. "I don't think it would have generated as much interest if it had been a man who was naked," he says. The day after the premiere theatre critics were divided over the Turner's performance. But Rhys was praised for his American accent and the chemistry between the couple. Even a comment that the few scenes, in which he did not appear, seemed to suffer from his absence. Matthew’s mother told: "We went to see the play in its earliest preview last week. Matthew has grown in confidence immensely since then. They have changed a few things and the play ran incredibly smoothly. We were sat in front of Cilla Black in the stalls and we could hear her laughing all the way through. Kathleen has been very kind about Matthew and it was good he had somebody so experienced with him. She is a very charming lady and Matthew and her get on so well."

His sister, Rachel, said: "When Matthew gets nervous he fiddles with his hands. He also shouts and slams doors. "We ended up laughing in the moments when everyone else was quiet because we could see him doing it." About some bitchy remarks about her fulsome, womanly shape Matthew gallantly said: "It's a case of the green-eyed monster. She has a beautiful figure and is great to go to bed with. Not that I'm really taking notice, of course. I was far too embarrassed to begin with. When she turned on the seductive charm, the acting went out the window. I was sweating for real. This woman, who you've seen in Body Heat and Romancing the Stone, and the next minute she's whispering in your ear. You're like: Oh my God! Oh shit! I can honestly say, in five months of doing it, I never properly looked at her when she was naked." Rhys admitted that when he starring opposite Kathleen Turner, he was forced to think on his feet. "My character, Benjamin, has an argument with Mrs Robinson's daughter and she's

meant to stomp out through the door. But one night the door wouldn't open, so we had to start improvising. I said something like, 'I hope you've brought your overnight bag'. The people we saw after the show said that had been their favorite part. The audience love it when it goes wrong. They feel like they're being let in on a secret and they want to see how you will get out of it." In a 2002 interview he would admit : “As much as I loved it, I found it extremely nerve-racking, particularly the endless comparisons to Dustin Hoffman. Almost everyone over a certain age had seen the film, and came in with a strong view of what it meant to them. To bring a new life to a character that has been set in stone was very hard. But I did get to meet James Coburn. He came to see it and he hugged me. So I've been hugged by one of the Magnificent Seven.”

Trivia: Apart from Turner, Rhys says he would have loved to have starred opposite Audrey Hepburn. "She had it all - she was classy and sexy."