Rupert Penry-Jones

Rupert William Penry-Jones is an English actor born in London on 22 September 1970. The son of Welsh actor Peter Penry-Jones and English actress Angela Thorne, he was educated at Dulwich College before enrolling at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School at age 19. He later stated that he was expelled from the school for having a bad attitude. His brother, Laurence Penry-Jones, born in London in 1977, is an actor turned ambulance driver married to actress Polly Walker.

Penry-Jones made his London stage debut in 1995 at the Hackney Empire, playing Fortinbras opposite Ralph Fiennes in an Almeida production of Hamlet. That same year he appeared on television alongside his mother in Cold Comfort Farm on BBC One. He went on to originate the role of Richard in the premiere of Stephen Poliakoff's Sweet Panic at Hampstead Theatre in 1996, and the following year appeared in The Paper Husband at the same venue and played Pip Thompson in a revival of Arnold Wesker's Chips with Everything on the Lyttelton stage at the Royal National Theatre.

In 1998 Penry-Jones created the role of the Boy in Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby at the Almeida Theatre. The following year he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, taking the title role in Don Carlos at The Other Place and playing Alcibiades in Timon of Athens at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Both productions subsequently transferred to the Barbican Centre in London, where his performance as Don Carlos earned him the 1999 Ian Charleson Award.

His stage work continued into the 2000s with a range of productions. In 2001 he played Robert Caplan opposite Dervla Kirwan in J. B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, a production that transferred to the Garrick Theatre in London's West End for a four-month run. Between July and October 2003 he took the leading role of Louis XIV in Nick Dear's Power at the National's Cottesloe Theatre. He returned to the stage in late 2009, playing Carl in Michael Wynne's The Priory at the Royal Court Theatre, London, from 19 November 2009 to 16 January 2010.

On Broadway, Penry-Jones appeared in 1995 in a production of Hamlet. His television career has been equally extensive. He played barrister Alex Hay in the Channel 4 serial North Square in 2000, and Donald Maclean in the BBC's four-part Cambridge Spies in 2003. In 2004 he joined the cast of the BBC series Spooks in its third series, taking the lead role of section chief Adam Carter for four series before departing in 2008, a performance for which he won an ITV3 Crime Thriller Award. He also portrayed Captain Wentworth in ITV's adaptation of Persuasion and played Grimani in Russell T Davies' Casanova in 2005.

In 2008 Penry-Jones starred in Burn Up alongside Bradley Whitford and Neve Campbell as an oil executive caught up in the politics of global warming, and played Richard Hannay in the BBC's adaptation of The 39 Steps. The following year he took the lead role of DI Joseph Chandler in the ITV thriller Whitechapel, a three-part drama centered on copycat Jack the Ripper killings that became the highest-performing new drama of 2009. The series ran for four seasons, concluding in September 2013. From 2012 to 2014 he starred opposite Maxine Peake in the legal drama Silk, created by Peter Moffat, playing barrister Clive Reader as the two characters compete to become QCs. He also appeared in the film A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman, alongside Kate Winslet, playing the role of Antoine.

Between 2014 and 2017 Penry-Jones joined the cast of Guillermo del Toro's American horror series The Strain, playing Mr. Quinlan, a vampire-human hybrid, across 29 episodes over three seasons. The role required extensive prosthetics and makeup, something Penry-Jones stated he would not undertake again on television. In 2020 a trailer for The Batman revealed he had been cast as Gotham City Mayor Don Mitchell Jr. In 2022 he starred as Mike/Toby in the ITV drama Our House alongside Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton.

In August 2010 the BBC One program Who Do You Think You Are? revealed that Penry-Jones' maternal grandfather William had served with the Indian Army Medical Corps at the Battle of Monte Cassino, and that his ancestors had a long-standing connection with the Indian Army. The program also disclosed that Penry-Jones has Indian ancestry dating to the early 19th century. In his personal life, Penry-Jones married Irish actress Dervla Kirwan in August 2007, following a four-year engagement that began after the two met during the 2001 production of Dangerous Corner. They have two children together.