Cary Elwes

Cary Elwes is an English actor whose best-known roles combine old-fashioned romantic adventure, broad comedy and genre filmmaking. He was born Ivan Simon Cary Elwes in Westminster, London, on 26 October 1962. His family background connected him to the arts: his father, Dominick Elwes, was a portrait painter, his mother, Tessa Kennedy, an interior designer, and his brothers Cassian and Damian Elwes built careers in film production and art. Elwes trained at Harrow, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Sarah Lawrence College, and also studied acting in New York.

He began appearing on screen in the 1980s, including Another Country and Lady Jane, before the role that became inseparable from his career: Westley in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride. Released in 1987, the film mixed fairy tale, satire and romance. Its theatrical run was modest, but its afterlife on home video and television turned it into a cult classic. Elwes's performance as the farm boy turned masked hero relied on sincerity as much as parody, allowing the film's comedy to work without flattening the romance. The line between swashbuckling homage and comic self-awareness became one of his trademarks.

Elwes then moved between Hollywood studio pictures and character roles. He appeared in Glory, Days of Thunder, Hot Shots!, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Twister, Kiss the Girls and Liar Liar. His facility with spoof and earnest adventure made him a natural fit for Mel Brooks's Robin Hood comedy, while his supporting work in dramas and thrillers kept him from being limited to one tone. He could play polished, aristocratic, absurd or villainous, depending on the project, and filmmakers often used the contrast between his refined manner and the chaos around him.