Ivan Simon Cary Elwes (born 26 October 1962) is an English actor and writer. He is best known for his roles as Westley in The Princess Bride, Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Fritz Arno Wagner in Shadow of the Vampire, Arnold in Georgia Rule, and Dr. Lawrence Gordon in
Saw. His other noted roles include Glory, Kiss the Girls, Days of Thunder, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Hot Shots!, Twister, The Jungle Book, Ella Enchanted, and Liar, Liar. He has also had recurring roles in television series such as The X-Files and Psych and Crackle's The Art of More. He also appeared in several episodes of Granite Flats. Ivan Simon Cary Elwes was born on 26 October 1962 in Westminster, London, the youngest of three sons of portrait painter Dominic Elwes and interior designer and socialite Tessa Kennedy. He is the brother of artist Damian Elwes and film producer Cassian Elwes. His stepfather, Elliott Kastner, was an American film producer. His paternal grandfather was painter Simon Elwes, whose own father was the diplomat and tenor Gervase Elwes (1866–1921). His other great-grandfathers include the diplomat Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell and industrialist Ivan Rikard Ivanović. Elwes has English, Irish, Croatian Jewish, Serbian, and Scottish ancestry. His Croatian and Serbian roots come from his maternal grandmother, Daška McLean, whose second husband, Billy McLean, was an operative for Special Operations Executive during World War II. One of Elwes' relatives is John Elwes, who is alleged in some sources to have been the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (1843). Elwes himself played five roles in the 2009 film adaptation of the novel. 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 Roman Catholic and was an altar boy at Westminster Cathedral, although he did not attend denominational schools as most of the men on his father's side of the family had, including his father. His paternal relatives include such clerics as Dudley Charles Cary-Elwes (1868–1932), the Roman Catholic Bishop of Northampton, Abbott Columba Cary-Elwes (Ampleforth Abbey, Saint Louis Abbey), and Father Luke Cary-Elwes (Fort Augustus 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' parents divorced when he was four years old, and in 1975, when Elwes was 12, his father died by suicide. Elwes young acadamia was primarily Harrow School. He then attended 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 famous actor, Brando insisted on calling him "Rocky" after Rocky Marciano.
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