IMDb Mini Biography
Born in a seaside resort town, Britain's Rupert Graves was born a rebel, resisting authority and breaking rules at an early age. In his teens he became a punk rocker and even found work as a circus clown and in traveling comedy troupes. In 1983 he made his professional stage debut in "The Killing of Mr. Toad" and went on to co-star with Harvey Fierstein in the London production of "Torch Song Trilogy." It didn't take long for somebody to take note of Rupert's boyish good looks and offbeat versatility. By the mid-80s he was a presence in quality films and TV, primarily period pieces such as his Freddy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985) and the gay drama Maurice (1987).
Rupert moved to the front of the class quickly. His decisions to select classy, obscure arthouse films as opposed to box-office mainstream may have put a dimmer on his star, but earned him a distinct reputation as a daring, controversial artist in the same vein as Johnny Depp. In A Handful of Dust (1988) he essayed the role of a penniless status seeker who beds down a married socialite; in Different for Girls (1996) he was the lover of a male transsexual; in The Innocent Sleep (1996) he played a derelict drunk; and in the award-winning Intimate Relations (1996) he portrayed an aimless boarder who has a relationship with both the mother/landlady and her daughter.
Equally adept at costume and contemporary drama, Rupert more recently earned rave reviews on Broadway with "Closer" in 2000 and "The Elephant Man" in 2002. Rupert is currently married to production coordinator Susie Lewis.
All Movie Guide
Rupert Graves has repeatedly impressed audiences with his dead-on portrayals of upper-class twits since 1985, when he appeared in Ismail Merchant and James Ivory's classic adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View. However, Graves' own background could not be more different from those of the characters he brings to the screen.
Born June 30, 1963, Graves grew up in the small town of Weston-Super-Mare (coincidentally also the birthplace of John Cleese), located in western England. By his own account a terrible student who resented authority, Graves left school at 15 and joined the circus. After his stint with the circus ended, Graves made his way to London, where, at 19, he landed his first acting role in a stage production of The Killing of Mr. Toad. His performance caught the attention of a film industry figure, which in turn led to his first film role in A Room With a View. As the irresponsible and irrepressible Freddy Honeychurch (brother of the film's heroine, played by Helena Bonham Carter), Graves gave a performance that set the pattern for the roles he was to be typcast in for much of the next decade.
Graves virtually became the male equivalent of Helena Bonham Carter, in that he was stuck in period drama after period drama until others slowly realized that his range was not limited to films with an abundance of waistcoats, corsets, and men with names like Cecil or Clive. Graves' other significant films of the 80s included another Merchant Ivory outing, the memorable Maurice (1987) (in which Graves played Maurice's working class lover, Alec Scudder, and, as in A Room With a View, demonstrated his ability to tackle nude scenes), 1988's A Handful of Dust (also starring a then-unknown Kristin Scott Thomas, and Graves' Maurice colleague James Wilby), and the epic television series Fortunes of War, set during World War II and starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.
In the 1990s, Graves has continued to do period pieces such as the 1991 adaptation of E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread (reuniting him again with Bonham Carter), and Nicholas Hytner's brilliant The Madness of King George (1995), which also starred "the other Rupert," Rupert Everett. In addition, he made a memorable appearance in the film adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1997) as a shell-shocked World War I veteran. As he has gained greater recognition, however, Graves has been able to branch out toward other genres, notably as Jeremy Irons' jilted, ill-fated son in Louis Malle's Damage (1993), a confused and irresponsible motorcycle courier in Different For Girls (1996), and as the severely conflicted Harold Guppy in the deliciously twisted Intimate Relations (1996), for which he won a Best Actor award at the Montreal Film Festival.
In addition to his film work, Graves has continued to work for television and the stage, acting as the wormy, conniving Octavius alongside Billy Zane in the TV series Cleopatra (1999), and in such stage productions as Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1998) and the the hit Broadway production of Patrick Marber's Closer (1999).
Trivia
Best Actor Award, 1996 Montreal Film Festival - "Intimate Relations"
Worked odd jobs including a shoe factory and a fish-and-chips shop prior to 1986.
Left school at the age of 15--he ran away from his hometown of Weston-Super-Mare to join the circus as a clown.
He was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor of 1997 season for his performance in HurlyBurly at the Queen's Theatre.
He has a son with wife Susie Lewis named Joseph, born 2003.
Son of Richard Harding Graves and Mary Lousilla.
Personal Quotes
Giving interviews is just very dull. Talking about yourself and something that you've got less interest in than you had, because you've already moved on to something else. But you have a contractual obligation. - interview with Emma Brooks, April 22, 2002.
"I'm really pleased with myself. I've not had any training. I came from Weston-super-Mare, the same place as John Cleese, but I didn't have an education. I knew nothing about acting except that early on I knew I wanted to do it, and I've managed for 20 years to do things without doing them just for the money. Very, very occasionally when I've been really strapped for cash I thought I'd better do a job for money maybe about four times in 20 years, every five years or so on average. And the rest of the time I've done pretty much as I've pleased in jobs that have interested me. By those standards, which are the standards that I judge myself by, I feel happy. The amount of work you need to do to become a very successful celebrity is something I'm not prepared to do."
