Matthew Rhys

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  From the 16th to the 28th of November 2025, Matthew Rhys stood alone on a Welsh stage and played Richard Burton. The one-man play was called Playing Burton. It marked the 100th anniversary of Burton's birth.

  For an actor best known to many viewers through long-running television series, it was a homecoming of a particular kind. Rhys has spent his working life moving between Cardiff, London, New Zealand, Prague and California, and the Burton run brought him back to a Welsh audience.

  How does a boy schooled in Welsh in Cardiff become a lead actor in American television? What did he do when the cameras were off, and why did he end up investing in a pub in North Wales and a charter boat in New York? And what does being Welsh mean to a man whose career has taken him so far from Cardiff?

  282931321

• 2. Cardiff Beginnings

  ›

  Matthew Rhys was born in Cardiff on the 8th of November 1974, and the city's Welsh-language schools shaped his early years. He attended Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Melin Gruffydd in Whitchurch, then Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf in Llandaff North. Both are Welsh-medium schools, so his lessons were taught in Welsh.

  At 17, he played Elvis Presley in a school musical. Soon afterwards he applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, known as RADA, and was accepted. In 1993 he was awarded the Patricia Rothermere Scholarship.

  While he was still at RADA, he appeared in the BBC police series Backup and in the film House of America. Then he went home to Cardiff to act in his own language in the Welsh film Bydd yn Wrol, which means Be Brave. The performance won him Best Actor at BAFTA Cymru, the Welsh BAFTAs.

  Welsh material would keep drawing him back. In 2003 he played the mythic figure Lleu Llaw Gyffes in the film Y Mabinogi.

  4686298

• 3. Roles Around the World

  ›

  In January 1998, Rhys flew to New Zealand to star in Greenstone, a colonial costume drama made for television. A film role in Julie Taymor's Titus, her adaptation of Titus Andronicus, followed. He played Demetrius, with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange in the cast. Next he played Ray in Peter Hewitt's comedy Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?

  Back in Wales, he made two films in a row with Jonathan Pryce. In The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, about a dysfunctional single-parent family, he played the elder son. In Sara Sugarman's comedy Very Annie Mary he played Nob. That film's star, Rachel Griffiths, would later reunite with him on Brothers & Sisters.

  The year 2000 brought his first television lead, in Metropolis, a Granada TV drama about six twenty-somethings living in London. He also starred in Peaches, a film of the play written and directed by Nick Grosso. After that, he travelled to Ireland for The Abduction Club, an 18th-century swashbuckling adventure. He played Darren Daniels in Tabloid, then returned to New Zealand to shoot the epic drama The Lost World for the BBC.

  Prague hosted the independent horror film Deathwatch, in which he played Doc Fairweather. He also appeared in Fakers, a comic crime caper.

  In 2003, he played Justin Price in the final episode of the long-running series Columbo. Love and Other Disasters and Virgin Territory followed. Then came The Edge of Love, a film about a love quadrangle, in which he played the poet Dylan Thomas. Thomas's words would reach him again on a Cardiff stage, in the play Under Milk Wood.

  912131411

• 4. On Stage

  ›

  Rhys's theatre career started in 1997 at the Royal National Theatre, where he played Tommy in Peter Gill's Cardiff East. Roles at the Old Vic and the Royal Court followed, including Nick in Samuel Adamson's Grace Note. In 2000, he starred as Benjamin Braddock in the world premiere of the stage adaptation of The Graduate. Kathleen Turner played opposite him at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End.

  In 2002, he took the part of Tiny in Simon Bent's The Associate at the National. A year later he played Mog Edwards in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood at the New Theatre in Cardiff.

  The year 2004 was a Shakespearean one. For the Royal Shakespeare Company he played Edmund in King Lear and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. At the Young Vic he took on Macduff in Macbeth.

  Playing Burton, the 2025 one-man play, was written by Mark Jenkins. The run raised money for the inaugural season of Michael Sheen's new Welsh National Theatre. Critics gave Rhys positive reviews for his performance.

  An earlier American stage run came in 2012, when Rhys was cast as Jimmy in the Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway revival of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. It played at the Laura Pels Theatre, and the limited engagement ran through the 8th of April 2012. One week later, American television viewers would see him in a very different costume.

  8485888993

• 5. From Brothers to Spies

  ›

  After being cast in ABC's Brothers & Sisters, Rhys moved to Santa Monica to play Kevin Walker, a gay lawyer. The family drama ran for five seasons and ended in 2011.

  On the 15th of April 2012, the Public Broadcasting Service aired The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the United States as one feature-length episode. Rhys played John Jasper in the story, which was Charles Dickens's last, unfinished novel. The BBC had shown it in January 2012 as a two-part drama on BBC Two.

  That same year, he reprised Sir Alec Guinness's 1959 double role of John Barratt and Jacques DeGué in a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat. In 2013, he played Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Austen's hero, in a television adaptation of P. D. James's novel Death Comes to Pemberley.

  The role that made his name in America arrived in January 2013 with The Americans on FX. Rhys starred opposite Keri Russell as Philip Jennings, one of a pair of Russian KGB sleeper agents in a 1980s Cold War spy drama. The series aired its sixth and final season in 2018.

  For that last season, Rhys received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. In 2019, he also won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

  The Emmys had noticed him in another corner of television too. A guest role as Chuck Palmer in the 2017 episode of Girls, titled American Bitch, earned him a nomination.

  1918208794

• 6. After the Spy Drama

  ›

  In 2017, Rhys played Daniel Ellsberg in the film The Post. Two years later he played Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Later film roles included Andrew C. Thornton II in Cocaine Bear in 2023 and George Carlin in Saturday Night in 2024.

  The title role in Perry Mason came next. The period series ran from 2020 to 2023, and Rhys also served as an executive producer. His performance earned him a Primetime Emmy nomination.

  He has also built a second career in voice acting. He played Aloysius in Infinity Train in 2019 and Emperor Belos in The Owl House from 2020 to 2023. In 2023, he voiced Riley Greene across ten episodes of Gremlins. In 2024, he voiced Dan Dreiberg, who is Nite Owl, in the direct-to-video film Watchmen. In 2025, he voiced Thomas Paine in the six-part docuseries The American Revolution. In 2026, he voiced Dinosaurus in the fourth season of Invincible.

  In 2025, Rhys played the antagonist Nile Jarvis in The Beast in Me, an eight-part Netflix miniseries. The next year he starred in Widow's Bay, an Apple TV horror-comedy that received critical acclaim. In it he plays Tom Loftis, and he is also an executive producer.

  2265717881

• 7. Beyond Acting

  ›

  In 2011, Rhys set up his own production company, named Patagonia. By his December 2010 purchase of the film rights, he had already secured its first project, an adaptation of Operation Julie by Lyn Ebenezer. That book tells of the biggest LSD busts in the history of Wales. On a podcast in 2023, he described working on a possible film about Owain Glyndŵr, whose rebellion against the Kingdom of England began in 1400.

  Pubs have taken up some of his money and effort too. With help from fellow Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, he supported fundraising for the Vale of Aeron pub in Ystrad Aeron. He also invested in a pub in Pennal, a town in Gwynedd, North Wales. His father grew up there, and young Rhys spent summers and Easters visiting.

  In 2019, that pub, the Glan Yr Afon, also called Riverside, was put on the market without any buyers. A campaign supported by Rhys offered shares to the public and raised £450,000. The local community completed the purchase in December 2022.

  Rarebit is a charter boat in New York City that Rhys owns and rents out. It is a Wheeler boat built around 1934. He bought it on eBay in 2017 and rebuilt it himself, with advice from shipwrights.

  4041424650

• 8. Welsh Identity

  ›

  On the 8th of August 2008, Rhys was accepted into the druidic order of the Gorsedd of the Bards at the Welsh National Eisteddfod. The honour recognised his contributions to the Welsh language and to Wales. His bardic name is Matthew Tâf.

  Less than a month earlier, on the 15th of July 2008, Aberystwyth University had made him a fellow. In August 2009, he took to the stage with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales as part of the National Eisteddfod.

  He supports Plaid Cymru and has spoken out in favour of Welsh independence. In November 2018, he said he spoke to his son "only in Welsh", and added that he wants his son to understand the language.

  Rhys has been in a relationship with his The Americans co-star Keri Russell since 2014, and their first child, a son, was born in 2016. In interviews in 2021, they called each other husband and wife. By March 2025, Rhys was describing it differently: they "literally haven't got round to marriage yet".

  6358616453