Mark Rylance, English actor, director, and playwright
Sir David Mark Rylance Waters (born 18 January 1960) is an English actor, playwright, and theatre director. He was the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, between 1995 and 2005. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he made his professional debut at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in 1980. He appeared in the West End productions of Much Ado About Nothing in 1994 and Jerusalem in 2010, winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor for both. He has also appeared on Broadway, winning three Tony Awards: two for Best Actor for Boeing Boeing in 2008 and Jerusalem in 2011, and one for Best Featured Actor for Twelfth Night in 2014. He received Best Actor nominations for Richard III in 2014 and Farinelli and the King in 2017. He is one of only eight actors to have twice won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, while his nominations for Richard III and Twelfth Night in 2014 make him one of only six to be nominated in two acting categories in the same year.

Rylance's film appearances include Prospero's Books (1991), Angels and Insects (1995), Institute Benjamenta (1996), Intimacy (2001), and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). He attracted attention for his portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (2015), for which he won the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. He subsequently collaborated with Spielberg in the title role of The BFG (2016), a live-action film adaptation of the children's book by Roald Dahl; and as James Halliday in Ready Player One (2018), based on the novel of the same name. He also appeared in Christopher Nolan's World War II drama Dunkirk (2017) and Aaron Sorkin's Vietnam War court drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).

On television, Rylance won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor for his role as David Kelly in the 2005 Channel 4 drama The Government Inspector and for playing Thomas Cromwell in the 2015 BBC Two mini-series Wolf Hall. For Wolf Hall, he also received Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations.

Rylance is a patron of the London International Festival of Theatre; of the London-based charity Peace Direct, which supports peace-builders in areas of conflict; and of the British Stop the War Coalition. In 2016, he was included in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.