Mark Rylance: I Would Not Be Accepted in the Industry Today

Sir Mark Rylance has said he believes that theatre directors would not accept someone like him into the industry now.

Speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Rylance said acting used to be more accepting of "oddballs" like him.

He said: "I'm not a doctor, I'm an artist, but I remember when I first came into the theatre in 1980, I feel like there were a lot more kind of oddballs and difficult people in the theatre. And I think on film sets too. 

"Now I regularly, understandably, meet directors who only want people who are easy to work with, they don't want anyone difficult, they don't want anything like that. And I think that also can be a loss."

Asked what he was like as a younger actor, Rylance said he was "temperamental, moody and difficult to understand. I think today I might have got a bad reputation and not been welcomed into work."

Rylance was knighted for his services to theatre in 2017 by the Duke of Cambridge. Sir Mark, who won his third Tony award for his performance as Olivia in The Globe Theatre's all-male performance of Twelfth Night in 2013, also said he "doubts" he will play a woman again. 

"It's not where society is at the moment," he said.

Recalling when he first joined RADA and the RSC in the late 70s and early 80s, he said there were not any actors from the African diaspora in the companies.

"Things have improved. Now it's unthinkable that anyone other than someone from the African diaspora would play Othello for example," he added. 

Rylance's acting career has spanned four decades; he has won two Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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