Ivan Simon Cary Elwes (/ˈɛlwɪs/; born 26 October 1962), known professionally as Cary Elwes, is an English actor and voice actor. The son of painter Dominick Elwes and designer Tessa Georgina Kennedy, Elwes acted in off-Broadway plays during college and moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He is known for his roles as Westley in the classic film The Princess Bride, Arthur Holmwood in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and for his role as Dr. Lawrence Gordon in Saw and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter.
[>>]Source: WikipediaIvan Simon Cary Elwes (/ˈɛlwɪs/; born 26 October 1962), known professionally as Cary Elwes, is an English actor and voice actor. The son of painter Dominick Elwes and designer Tessa Georgina Kennedy, Elwes acted in off-Broadway plays during college and moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He is known for his roles as Westley in the classic film The Princess Bride, Arthur Holmwood in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and for his role as Dr. Lawrence Gordon in Saw and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter.
He has also appeared in box office hits such as Days of Thunder, Hot Shots!, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Twister, Liar, Liar and New Year's Eve. He has had recurring roles in television series such as The X-Files playing Brad Follmer and Psych playing Pierre Despereaux.
Early life and education [edit]
Elwes was born in Westminster, London. He is the third and youngest son of portrait-painter Dominick Elwes and interior designer Tessa Georgina Kennedy, who has Croatian, Anglo-Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His paternal grandfather was painter Simon Elwes, whose father was the diplomat and tenor Gervase Elwes (1866-1921). His brothers are Damian Elwes, an artist, and Cassian Elwes, a producer and agent. He was the stepson of Elliott Kastner, an American film producer. One of his ancestors is John Elwes, who is believed to be the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) (Elwes played five roles in the 2009 film adaptation of the novel).
He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. His parents divorced when he was four years old, and in 1975 when Elwes was thirteen his father committed suicide. Elwes attended Harrow School in London and then the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1981 Elwes moved to the United States to study acting at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. While living in New York, Elwes studied acting at both the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
Elwes also was a production assistant on the films Octopussy and Superman, where he worked for a week assigned to Marlon Brando. When Elwes introduced himself, Brando told him he was lying and that his (Elwes') name was actually Rocky.
[<<]This text is based on a article from the open encyclopedia Wikipedia and stands under GNU license for free documentation. On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available. Image: Angela George at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharongraphics/
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