Cary Elwes

Ivan Simon Cary Elwes was born on 26 October 1962 in Westminster, London. He is the youngest of three sons of portrait painter Dominick Elwes and Tessa Kennedy, an interior designer and socialite. Cary is the brother of artist Damian Elwes and film producers Cassian Elwes and Milica Kastner. Cary's stepfather, Elliott Kastner, was an American film producer and the first American to set up independent film production in the United Kingdom. Cary's paternal grandfather was the portrait painter Simon Elwes, whose own father was the diplomat and tenor Gervase Elwes (1866–1921). One of Cary Elwes' relatives is John Elwes, a British miser who was the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (1843), having been referenced by Charles Dickens himself in chapter six of his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. Elwes himself played five roles in the 2009 film adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Through his maternal grandfather, Elwes is also related to Sir Alexander William "Blackie" Kennedy, one of the first photographers to document the archaeological site of Petra following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Elwes was brought up as a Catholic and was an altar boy at Westminster Cathedral. His paternal relatives include such clerics as Dudley Charles Cary-Elwes (1868–1932), the Bishop of Northampton, and Abbot Columba Cary-Elwes (Ampleforth Abbey, Saint Louis Abbey). He discussed this in an interview while he was filming the 2005 CBS television film Pope John Paul II, in which he played the young priest Karol Wojtyła. Elwes's parents divorced when he was four years old. In 1975, when Elwes was 13, his father died by suicide. He was educated at Harrow School, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1981, he moved to the United States to study acting at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. While living there, Elwes studied acting at both the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute under the tutelage of Al Pacino's mentor, Charlie Laughton (not to be confused with English actor Charles Laughton). As a teenager, he also worked as a production assistant on the films Absolution, Octopussy, and Superman, where he was assigned to Marlon Brando. When Elwes introduced himself to the actor, Brando insisted on calling him "Rocky" after Rocky Marciano.