Paul Rhys, born 19 December 1963 in Neath to working-class parents Kathryn Ivory and Richard Charles Rhys, is a Welsh actor with a long and varied career across theatre, television and film.
He won a Bernard Shaw Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where he was spotted early on by director Philip Prowse and invited to appear in Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre.
Rhys is best known on screen for playing Sydney Chaplin opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992). His film work since has included From Hell, Love Lies Bleeding, Becoming Colette and Hellraiser: Deader, and more recently he appeared as Talleyrand in Ridley Scott's Napoleon (2023) and as Duncan in Emerald Fennell's Saltburn (2023).
On television he has built an equally substantial body of work, with leading roles in Tumbledown, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anna Karenina, The Deal, Borgia, Luther and Spooks, working with directors including Stephen Frears and Sir Richard Eyre.