Rufus Frederik Sewell was born on 29 October 1967 in Hammersmith, London. Older listings for this page claimed he was born and raised in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, but that is not accurate — his actual Welsh connection comes through his mother, Jo Sewell, a Welsh artist and classically trained pianist. His father, William John Frederick Sewell, an animator who worked on the Beatles' film Yellow Submarine, died when Rufus was ten, and his parents had divorced when he was five.
After the family broke up, Sewell's mother made her home at The Pelican in Laugharne, a house formerly belonging to the parents of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Sewell grew up attending Orleans Park School in Twickenham before training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but Laugharne became, and remained, a place closely associated with him through his mother's long connection to the town.
Sewell built a wide-ranging film, television and stage career from the early 1990s onward. His film credits include Dark City (1998), A Knight's Tale (2001), The Illusionist (2006) and The Father (2020), while on television he has played Lord Melbourne in Victoria, the Nazi official John Smith in The Man in the High Castle, and Hal Wyler in the Netflix series The Diplomat. On stage, his performance as Jan in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll won him the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play in 2007 and a Tony Award nomination on Broadway. In 2024 he played Prince Andrew, Duke of York, in the Netflix drama Scoop.
Sewell's ties to Wales continued into his personal life: in July 2024 he married the American actress Vivian Benitez at Manorbier Castle in Pembrokeshire.