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ONCE upon a time, the indubitably dashing British actor Rufus Sewell was known to U.S. audiences primarily (if at all) for his roles in a pair of BBC imports: the 1994 miniseries adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch, which aired on PBS; and the John Schlesinger directed Cold Comfort Farm, which was released as a feature film in 1995. Sewell's visibility took a quantum leap in 1998, however, with back-to-back starring turns in the sixteenth-century romance Dangerous Beauty and the bleak-future thriller Dark City. In less time than it takes to say "Ralph Fiennes," the thoroughly British Sewell was anointed Hollywood's latest Limey du jour.

Descended in a long line from Joseph Sewell, a roguish English highwayman deported to Australia in 1830, Sewell was born in the Twickenham district of the London borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. Shortly following his birth, Sewell's father, an Australian animator whose career was most distinguished by his work on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine, left Sewell and his older brother in the care of their mother and moved to central London's Soho district. His mother, who wanted to ensure that her children were reared to be as open-minded as possible, allowed young Rufus to parade around in the buff whenever he pleased until he was eight years old. When Sewell was ten, his father died, a tragic event that plunged the boy into a period of preadolescent rebellion that lingered into his teenage years. During this refractory phase, Sewell dyed his hair, painted his nails, wore mascara, and became an accomplished shoplifter; he also landed in juvenile detention on more than one occasion and was even picked up once on suspicion of being a male escort (the charge was ultimately dismissed). In 1986, he commenced a career in acting primarily as a means of providing himself with, as he later recalled to one interviewer, "sex and free sandwiches."

Following three years of formal training at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Sewell made his professional theatrical debut in a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It staged at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. During the next three years while he was busy with the standard starving-actor routine, his repertoire of odd jobs came to include (among other things) road sweeper, carpenter's assistant, and rock-and-roll drummer.

Sewell's first significant break came along in 1991, when he landed a major supporting role in the coming-of-age drama Twenty-One, a vehicle for actress Patsy Kensit (who would later create a spectacle by wedding Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher). Upon ascertaining that the bright-eyed actor was not "one of those fussy bastards," the second-assistant director issued Sewell a trailer that was actually a slightly modified portable toilet equipped with one secondhand, foam-padded chair. Awestruck by the amount of free food available on the set, Sewell subjected himself to additional mortification when he was caught attempting to make off with a prodigious quantity of sausage rolls and chicken wings. Though Twenty-One played only briefly in the States, the film won Sewell a modicum of notoriety in his native Britain, and the next year witnessed his triumphant return to the stage in an acclaimed West End production of Making It Better.

Though his next movie role was a mere supporting part as a "phone-sex pest" in 1993's execrable empowerment farce Dirty Weekend, Sewell's star was rising as rapidly at the box office as it was on the stage. The same year Dirty Weekend hit theaters, he briefly left a highly successful London stage run of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia to fly to Los Angeles to read for the role of brooding bloodsucker Lestat in Interview With the Vampire. Tom Cruise ultimately plucked the plum part, which prompted Sewell to wryly remark, "Me and Tom Cruise, we're always going up for the same parts. He won this time." Prominent appearances in such independent fare as A Man of No Importance and Carrington won Sewell the notice of American critics and Hollywood producers, and a much-ballyhooed casual encounter with pop icon Madonna was blown into a minor affair by the London tabloids, further heightening his public profile. In 1995, Sewell added a heralded lead performance in a Broadway production of Translations to his impressive stage career; that same year, fellow Brit Emma Thompson was added to his equally impressive sum of bogus reputed
affairs.

Not that all of Sewell's womanizing has proven purely the stuff of tabloid fabrication and innuendo: in 1995, he ended a lengthy relationship with British actress Helen McCrory; and 1996 saw him briefly date fellow rising star Kate Winslet, with whom he'd become acquainted while playing Fortinbras in Kenneth Brannagh's film adaptation of Hamlet. Sewell, who makes his home in the Hampstead district of London's Camden borough, has been sharing space with fashion journalist Yasmin Abdallah since 1997. They married in March of last year and have since split up.

In the wake of Dangerous Beauty and Dark City came roles in the John Turturro-directed comedy Illuminata, which also features Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon; and the cross-cultural romance The Very Thought of You, which co-stars Joseph Fiennes and Monica Potter. Fans can expect to see plenty more of the aristocratic-looking Brit at the box office. Recently Bless the Child was released and his next film coming out next year is A Knights Tale which will also star Heath Ledger and At Sachem Farm which also stars Minnie Driver and Nigel Hawthorne.

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