Cary Elwes
Birthdate: Oct 26, 1962
Birthplace: London, England, UK
Cary Elwes (birthname: Ivan Simon Cary Elwes) has built a long and respected career as a supporting actor since 1984 when he debuted in Julian Mitchell’s film version of his play, Another Country, which also featured Colin Firth in his feature debut opposite Rupert Everett. In his next major film credit, Elwes co-starred with Helena Bonham Carter in the Trevor Nunn-directed and David Edgar-written Lady Jane (1986). Elwes became associated with a perennial classic in 1987 as co-star of Rob Reiner’s cult movie, The Princess Bride, with Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, and Fred Savage.
Elwes was then cast in a co-starring role in Glory (1989), starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington (Oscar winner for best-supporting actor), and Morgan Freeman, and then opposite Tom Cruise in Tony Scott’s hit ($158 million) race car drama, Days of Thunder (1990), while being cast by director Mel Brooks as Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), with Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Dave Chappelle, and Tracey Ullman. After these starring roles, Cary Elwes shifted into mainly supporting roles in several major Hollywood movies, starting with Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves, and grossing a strong $216 million.
This was followed for Elwes with a starring role in writer-director Alan Shapiro’s The Crush (1993), with Alicia Silverstone; a co-starring role for Elwes under co-writer/director Stephen Sommer in Disney’s The Jungle Book (1994), with Jason Scott Lee, Sam Neill, and John Cleese; Elwes’s supporting role in the Warner Bros. thriller (and first theatrical feature released in ancillary on the then-new DVD format), Twister (1996), with Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Todd Field, and earning a whopping $495.7 million.
Another supporting role for Elwes in another mega-hit ($302.7 million), the Jim Carrey-starring comedy, Liar Liar (1997); a major supporting role in the thriller, Kiss the Girls (1997), co-starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd; and a more distinguished role for Elwes as John Houseman (opposite many fine actors including Hank Azaria, Ruben Blades, John Cusack, Philip Baker Hall, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, John Turturro, and Emily Watson) in a less commercially-successful drama, writer-director Tim Robbins’ lovingly made version of Marc Blitzstein’s play, Cradle Will Rock (1999), which is not based on the Orson Welles’ still-unproduced screenplay.
Cary Elwes played in his second Dracula-themed drama, the remarkable film directed by E. Elias Merhige, Shadow of the Vampire (2000), with Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, Eddie Izzard, and Udo Kier. Another historical character for Elwes was movie mogul Thomas Ince in Peter Bogdanovich’s murder mystery, The Cat’s Meow (2001), with Kirsten Dunst and Izzard. One of the biggest hits in Elwes’s long filmography is his first exploitation horror movie, the original movie in the Saw (2004) franchise, earning 100 times its $1 million budget, and reuniting with the franchise team in Saw 3D (2010), the seventh entry in the series.
Elwes played opposite Anne Hathaway, Hugh Dancy, and Vivica A. Fox in the failed U.S./U.K./Irish jukebox musical, Ella Enchanted (2004), and then appeared in Ivan Reitman’s successful rom-com, No Strings Attached (2011), with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. Elwes was a favorite during this period with comedy director Garry Marshall, who cast him in both Georgia Rule (2007) and New Year’s Eve (2011), opposite Robert De Niro and Halle Berry.
Cary Elwes gained his first role—a small one since it was the last role cast-- under Steven Spielberg’s direction in the animated version of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011). Elwes either starred or was supported in several minor movies following this, including The Citizen (2012), Behaving Badly (2013), with Selena Gomez; Sugar Mountain in 2015; and writer-director Peer Pederson’s drama, We Don’t Belong Here (2017), with Anton Yelchin in his final film role.
Elwes reunited with director Rob Reiner for Being Charlie (2015), with Nick Robinson and Common, followed by a role opposite Penelope Cruz in Fernando Treuba’s period movie, The Queen of Spain (2016), with Javier Camara, Arturo Ripstein, Jorge Sanz, and Mandy Patinkin. In the same year, Elwes had his screenplay for Elvis & Nixon, about the meeting of the disgraced President and the revered rocker, filmed for Amazon Studios’ first theatrical release co-starring Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey.
The next notable movie in Cary Elwes’s many credits is the Lina Roessler-directed comedy-drama, Best Sellers (2021), starring Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza, and premiering at the Berlin Film Festival. Elwes played opposite Jason Statham, Plaza, Josh Hartnett, Bugzy Malone, and Hugh Grant in co-writer-director Guy Ritchie’s financially failed spy action movie, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023).
In another Berlin festival premiere, Elwes co-starred in Canadian producer-writer-director Matt Johnson’s well-reviewed biopic about the rise and fall of the once-revered electronic device, BlackBerry (2023), with Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, and Saul Rubinek. Another true story movie for Elwes was Sweetwater (2023), written and directed by Martin Guigui, starring Everett Osborne and Jeremy Piven, followed by Elwes’s first role in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), starring Tom Cruise and written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
Cary Elwes had a small supporting role in Zack Snyder’s space drama, Rebel Moon (2023), with Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Jena Malone, Corey Stoll, and Anthony Hopkins. Filmmaker Ritchie cast Elwes in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2025), his film version of Damien Lewis’s history of a secret spy ring in WW2 run by Winston Churchill and author Ian Fleming, with Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Henry Golding.
Personal Details
Cary Elwes was born and raised in London, England, by parents Dominic Elwes (portrait painter) and Tessa Kennedy (interior designer and socialite). His older brothers are artist Damian Elwes and film producer Cassian Elwes; his late step-sister was film producer Milica Kastner. When Elwes was age four, his parents (who had originally eloped when Kennedy was a minor, had married in Havana, Cuba, and were legally separated by the British court in 1958) divorced; his birth father Dominic committed suicide when Elwes was age 13.
In 1971, his mother Tessa married film producer Elliot Kastner, the first American producer to establish independent film production in the U.K. Elwes schooled at Harrow School and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and then studied acting at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, as well as the legendary Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Elwes has been married to actor-producer Lisa Kurbikoff since 2000; the couple has one daughter, Dominique. Elwes’s height is 6’. Elwes’s estimated net worth is $6 million.
Filmography
actor
Previous (13)
- 2024 | The Ministry of Ungentlemanly WarfareasBrigadier Gubbins 'M'
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
The British military recruits a small group of highly skilled soldiers to strike against German forces behind enemy lines during World War II.
- 2023 | Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part OneasDenlinger
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.
- 2023 |
- 2023 | SweetwaterasNed Irish
Sweetwater
In the fall of 1950, Nat 'Sweetwater' Clifton makes history in his journey to become the first African American to sign an NBA contract, forever changing the game of basketball.
- 2023 | Operation Fortune: Ruse de GuerreasNathan
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
Special agent Orson Fortune and his team of operatives recruit one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars to help them on an undercover mission when the sale of a deadly new weapons technology threatens to disrupt the world order.
- 2021 | Best Sellers
Best Sellers
Lucy Stanbridge (Aubrey Plaza) has inherited her father’s publishing house, and the ambitious would-be editor has nearly sunk it with failing titles. She discovers she is owed a book by Harris Shaw (Michael Caine), a reclusive, cantankerous, booze-addled author who originally put the company on the map decades earlier. In a last-ditch effort to save the company, Lucy and Harris release his new book and embark on a book tour from hell that changes them both in ways they didn’t expect.
- 2021 | The UnholyasBishop Gyles
The Unholy
A hearing-impaired girl is visited by the Virgin Mary and can suddenly hear, speak, and heal the sick. As people flock to witness her miracles, terrifying events unfold. Are they the work of the Virgin Mary or something much more ...
- 2019 | Black ChristmasasProfessor Gelson
Black Christmas
A group of female students is stalked by a stranger during their Christmas break. That is until the young sorority pledges discover that the killer is part of an underground college conspiracy.
- 2005 | The Cat ReturnsasThe Baron
The Cat Returns
After helping a cat, a seventeen-year-old girl finds herself involuntarily engaged to a cat Prince in a magical world where her only hope of freedom lies with a dapper cat statuette come to life.
- 2004 |
- 1994 | Porco RossoasDonald Curtis
Porco Rosso
In 1930s Italy, a veteran World War I pilot is cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig.
- 1989 |
- 1987 | The Princess BrideasWestley
The Princess Bride
A bedridden boy's grandfather reads him the story of a farmboy-turned-pirate who encounters numerous obstacles, enemies and allies in his quest to be reunited with his true love.
Some Facts About Cary Elwes
Famed Relatives: Cary Elwes has several famed relatives, including John Elwes, used by Charles Dickens as his model for Ebenezer Scrooge for his story, A Christmas Carol; portrait painter Simon Elwes (paternal grandfather); diplomat and vocal tenor Gervase Elwes (paternal great-grandfather); WWII Special Operations Executive Billy McLean (maternal grandfather); early archeological photographer Sir Alexander “Blackie” Kennedy (on Elwes’s maternal side); and on his paternal side are relatives Abbot Columba Cary-Elwes and Dudley Charles Cary-Elwes, the Bishop of Northampton.
AKA: When working as a production assistant on Superman (1978), co-star Marlon Brando dubbed Elwes “Rocky,” after boxer Rocky Marciano.
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