Patron: Sir Mark Rylance

‘I live very happily in South London as did my grandfather and great grandfather before me. I totally support the amazing efforts of the Friends to reuse this gem of a building for the community as an arts and creative hub.’

Mark Rylance is an English actor and playwright. 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, Rylance made his professional debut at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1980. Over 40 years, he has worked for many theatres and in many plays in Britain and America. Perhaps most famously in the play Jerusalem as Rooster Byron. Also in his own plays I am Shakespeare and Nice Fish.

His film appearances include three films with Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies, The BFG, and Ready Player One. Most recently, Rylance played the Magistrate in Ciro Guerra’s film Waiting for the Barbarians and William Kunstler in Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7.

His television appearances include two films with Peter Kosminsky, The Government Inspector and Wolf Hall. Rylance is a patron of Survival, the International movement for Tribal Peoples. He is also a founding patron of the London-based charity Peace Direct, which supports peace-builders in areas of conflict. He is thrilled to be a founding trustee of Intermission Youth, a Shakespearean youth theatre in London and also the Shakespearean Authorship Trust, a non-partisan society exploring the authorship of the Shakespeare works.