1980–1999: Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe In 1980 Rylance gained his professional acting debut in the
Shaun Lawton play
Desperado Corner at the
Glasgow Citizens' Theatre, where he acted in a variety of plays as well as organising his own
experimental theatre group. He received his first
Laurence Olivier Award nomination in the
Best Supporting Actor in a Play category for his portrayal of Michael in
Arden of Faversham at the
1983 Laurence Olivier Awards. In 1988 Rylance played
Hamlet with the RSC in
Ron Daniels' production that toured Ireland and Britain for a year. The play then ran in
Stratford-upon-Avon.
Hamlet toured the US for two years. In 1990 Rylance and
Claire van Kampen (later his wife) founded "Phoebus' Cart", their own theatre company. The following year, the company staged
The Tempest on the road. 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''. Rylance played the lead in
Gillies MacKinnon's film
The Grass Arena (1991), and won the
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.
2000–2009: Broadway debut and acclaim For his role as Jay in
Intimacy (2001), directed by Patrice Chéreau, he received real, rather than simulated,
fellatio. He took the leading role as British weapons expert
David Kelly in
Peter Kosminsky's
The Government Inspector (2005), an award-winning
Channel 4 production for which he won the
British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in 2005. That same year, Oswald's third play written for the Globe was first performed:
The Storm, an adaptation of
Plautus comedy
Rudens (
The Rope) – "argu[ably]" 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 2007 he received a
Sam Wanamaker Award together with his wife
Claire van Kampen, Director of Music, and
Jenny Tiramani, Director of
Costume Design, for the founding work during the opening ten years at Shakespeare's Globe. 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. 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. In 2007 Rylance performed in
Boeing-Boeing in London. In 2008 he reprised the role on Broadway and won
Drama Desk and
Tony Awards for his performance. In 2009 Rylance won the
Critics' Circle Theatre Award Best Actor, 2009 for his role of Johnny Byron in
Jez Butterworth's play
Jerusalem at the
Royal Court Theatre in London.
2010–2019: Career expansion and co-star
Ruby Barnhill in 2016 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. He played
Thomas Cromwell in
Wolf Hall (2015),
BBC Two's adaptation of
Hilary Mantel's historical novels
Wolf Hall and
Bring Up the Bodies. For his performance, he was nominated for numerous accolades including the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, the
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film and the
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie. Rylance was featured as the castaway on the
BBC radio programme
Desert Island Discs on 15 February 2015. 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, 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." 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." 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 2019 Rylance co-wrote and starred in the comedy play
Nice Fish, the first version of which premiered at the
Guthrie Theater in
Minneapolis in 2013, then underwent substantial revision. On 17 January 2016, the revised play received its premiere production at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which then transferred to
St. Ann's Warehouse, New York. Rylance played the title role in Spielberg's
The BFG, a film adaptation of the
children's book by
Roald Dahl. Filming took place in 2015, and the film was released in July 2016. 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. The film co-starred
Tom Hardy,
Kenneth Branagh,
Cillian Murphy and
Harry Styles. In 2018 Rylance made his third collaboration with Spielberg acting playing James Halliday in the science-fiction epic film
Ready Player One. That same year Rylance starred in
Farinelli and the King on the Broadway stage earning a
Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, his fifth career
Tony Award nomination. Later that year 2018, he appeared in
Waiting for the Barbarians, alongside
Johnny Depp and
Robert Pattinson. In June 2019, he resigned from the Royal Shakespeare Company due to its sponsorship deal with
BP. He last appeared on stage for the RSC in 1989.
2020–present On 8 September 2019 Rylance revealed to
AlloCiné that he was cast to play
Satan in the American filmmaker
Terrence Malick's upcoming film
The Last Planet (since renamed
The Way of the Wind). In 2020 Rylance appeared in
Aaron Sorkin's legal drama
The Trial of the Chicago 7 which premiered on
Netflix. He portrayed
William Kunstler, defence 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. The film received near universal praise and was nominated for six
Academy Awards. 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. 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. Rylance played the lead role of Dr Semmelweis throughout the run in Bristol. 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. 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, and Inland, a British drama directed by Fridtjof Ryder in his directorial debut. 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. In 2024 he also starred opposite
J. Smith-Cameron in the West End revival of
Juno and the Paycock at the
Gielgud Theatre. He also serves as a patron for the Bristol-based dance theatre company Impermanence, located at
The Mount Without. == Personal life ==