ANNA KARENINA

MATTHEW MACFADYEN previously starred opposite Keira Knightley for director Joe Wright in the celebrated Pride & Prejudice, for which he received a London Critics' Circle Film Award nomination. His early films included Ben Elton's Maybe Baby, with Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson; Michael Apted's Enigma; Paul McGuigan's The Reckoning; and Brad McGann's In My Father's Den. The latter attracted attention from the worldwide film industry, earning Mr. Macfadyen the New Zealand Screen Award and a British Independent Film Award (BIFA) nomination for Best Actor.

Among his subsequent features have been Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, as the Sheriff of Nottingham; Paul W.S. Anderson's The Three Musketeers, as Athos; Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral; Sharon Maguire's Incendiary; and Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, for which he shared a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination with his fellow actors from the ensemble.

Mr. Macfadyen was a drama scholar before being accepted to the famed Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). He graduated from RADA to join the innovative Cheek by Jowl theatre company, and made his professional stage debut in the troupe's production of The Duchess of Malfi. He also performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), in productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and School for Scandal, and on international tours. In 1998, Mr. Macfadyen starred again with Cheek by Jowl, as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, opposite Saskia Reeves as Beatrice. The production "crossed the pond" to the U.S., playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In 1999, he was nominated for the prestigious RSC Ian Charleson Award for Best Classical Actor under 30. His stage work also includes Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre production of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, starring as Prince Hal opposite Sir Michael Gambon's Falstaff; and the Vaudeville Theatre production of Private Lives, starring opposite Kim Cattrall for director Richard Eyre.

Mr. Macfadyen was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for his first television starring role, in Peter Kosminsky's BAFTA Award-winning BBC drama Warriors. He has starred in several notable miniseries and telefilms, including Rowan Joffe's Secret Life, for which he received a BAFTA Award nomination; James Hawes' Enid, opposite Helena Bonham Carter; Stephen Poliakoff's Perfect Strangers; David Yates' BAFTA Award-winning The Way We Live Now; Sergio Mimica-Gezzan's The Pillars of the Earth; Michael Samuels' Any Human Heart; Little Dorrit and Criminal Justice, for which he won a BAFTA Award; and, most recently, Ripper Street.

He is also well-known to audiences worldwide for his portrayal of government agent Tom Quinn in the first three seasons of the long-running hit series MI-5 (titled Spooks in the U.K.). He starred on the acclaimed series alongside Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, and Peter Firth.

TOP

Home | Theaters | Video | TV