The Rare Welsh Bit on Turner's Side
Sunday Times
May 3, 2000
Imogen Edwards-Jones
Of the troupe of male actors to come tumbling out of Wales in recent years, Matthew Rhys has emerged as one of the leading lights, vying with Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Ifans and Michael Sheen for public acclaim.
Just 25 years old, he is not only one of the stars of ITV's slick new thriller Metropolis, about six students leaving Leeds University for London, that launched on Monday, but he is also starring in the Dustin Hoffman role opposite Kathleen Turner's Mrs Robinson in the West End staging of The Graduate. The show is the toast of London with punters battling to get tickets for the chance to see Miss Turner in the buff - so successful, in fact, that the run at the Gielgud Theatre has just been extended by six weeks, closing now on July 29. As a first outing on the mainstream West End stage for Rhys, it is nothing if not audacious.
"Actually, I was very frightened about the whole thing," he admits with a slight smile. "I was alarmed about dying on my arse in such a public place - but that is part of the excitement."
He has thick dark hair and pale eyes and his slight frame and softly spoken Valleys lilt belie his enormous stage presence. Sitting up ramrod straight on a Soho banquette, drinking a cup of tea and forever fiddling with his fingers, Rhys hardly looks like a man who beds Turner for a living.
"I find it very intimidating when you meet and act with an actor of that calibre," he says. "But she is very friendly and that fear more or less disappeared in the first week.
"The audition was pretty frightening," he says with a wry laugh. "We did the seduction scene and I didn't have to do much acting really, so I just blushed and stuttered my way through it, and felt very embarrassed . . . so it worked well."
In fact, Rhys has done extremely well. He has walked with such apparent ease into the role that Terry Johnson's stage adaptation has been compared favourably to the Sixties film. "Oh God, I've stuck well clear of the film," replies Rhys, when asked if he had studied Dustin Hoffman for research. "It would be too inviting. It was something that worked so well, the temptation to copy would be great," he admits.
"Also if I'm aware that I want to make it my own Graduate, then I might play completely opposite to Hoffman, just to be opposite to him, rather than true to the script."
In fact Rhys does an excellent job that is not dissimilar to the Hollywood star's celluloid performance. "To me, he's a very frustrated and angry young man. Not that you should think about gaining an audience's sympathy, but you have to take them with you on your journey, otherwise you achieve nothing."
The same could be said of Rhys's role as Matthew in Metropolis. He's a handsome, louche slacker who spends most of his day in bed smoking dope and being miserable about the world. He is either seen being rude to his girlfriend, played by erstwhile House of Eliot actress Louise Lombard, or in a clinch with her. "I spend a lot of time watching daytime TV and occasionally having sex with my girlfriend," he laughs. "It's great. Well, in that particular scene it is her birthday . . . that and a cake, what more could a girl want?"
A mixture of This Life and Friends but with a rather creepy storyline, Metropolis is a glamorous production with potential cult status. It brings together the likes of Jason Barry, DiCaprio's drinking partner in Titanic, and James Purefoy, who features in Mansfield Park.
"To act with a group of actors my own age was just fantastic," says Rhys. "You very rarely get to do that as an actor. Normally you're one of the youngest people on the set, but to act in a group was great, and with some really interesting storylines."
Rhys was born and brought up in a Methodist family in Cardiff. Both his parents were teachers and his first language was Welsh. He attended a Welsh-speaking school where rugby prowess was more prized than acting. "I was always the lead in the school play, mainly because I was the only boy who did drama." With a stint at the National Theatre School of Wales under his belt, in 1993 he auditioned for Rada and won the first Lady Rothermere scholarship - awarded to the year's best student at any drama school in the country. "It was presented to me by Diana Rigg," he says.
Rhys has packed an awful lot into his short career. Winner of a Welsh Bafta, he has acted at the National, the Old Vic and the Royal Court. There have been numerous roles in television and film, including The Testimony of Taliesin Jones and Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? He is starring in two films later this year - Sorted and Peaches.
Rhys's latest role is as Demetrius in Julie Taymor's film of Titus Andronicus, which is released in Britain this summer. The production stars Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lang, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Rhys's other vile twin. "It is a very violent play, a sort of Pulp Fiction of its day really," says the actor. "And they have really gone for it. Jonathan and I have prosthetic throats which were slit. We are blond with tattoos and then we get served up in a whopping great pie at the end, which is basically like a tub of Pedigree Chum with a crust on top," he says. "They're just nutters really, who wear a lot of leather and bizarre animal skin costumes with big boots."
In the meantime, however, Rhys has a huge Hollywood star to tryst with on a nightly basis and twice on Saturdays. So what is it like kissing Kathleen Turner? "Oh great," he grins, sounding extremely Welsh.
So does he go the whole way? "Oh, never tongues on stage," he says, shaking his head. "Not unless they tell you to," he adds. Spoken like a true professional. The lad will surely go far.
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