Richard Roxburgh
RICHARD ROXBURGH
Date of Birth: January 1, 1962
The youngest of six siblings, Richard Roxburgh was born in Albury, New South Wales, Australia. He studied acting at the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia (where other famed Australians such as Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Cate Blanchett and Miranda Otto also studied) and graduated in 1986. He worked in the theater before landing his first screen role in the TV movie The Riddle of Stinson (1987). Work in other TV movies and mini-series followed before he made his film debut in Dead to the World (1991).
As a director, Richard won the 1994 Sydney Theatre Critics' Circle John Tasker Award for That Eye in the Sky. The same year, he also won the Sydney Theatre Critics' Circle Award for Best Actor, playing the title role in Hamlet. Roxburgh continued to pay his dues by working steadily in stage productions, small budget films and TV productions until 1996, when he landed a able role in the Australian feature, Children of the Revolution, starring Judy Davis, Geoffrey Rush, Rachel Griffiths and F. Murray Abraham. The same year he won a Silver Logie Award as Most Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for the mini-series Blue Murder. In 1997, he won an Australian Film Institute Award (Australia's equivalent of the Academy Award) for his leading role in Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997), as well as a Film Critics Circle of Australia Award as Best Male Actor.
Having made a name for himself in Australia, Roxburgh began appearing in international productions such as the US/Australian co-production Oscar and Lucinda (1997), starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett. He not only starred in home-grown films such as Passion (1999) but became known as the young actor to call on when foreign production companies took their features down under. In 2000, he played a role in his biggest budget film to date—Mission Impossible II, starring Tom Cruise. A box office smash, the film grossed over $200 million at the US box office alone.
Still in Australia, he managed to land a supporting role as the villainous Duke in Moulin Rouge! (2001), starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. For his work in the film, Roxburgh received an AFI nomination for Best Supporting Actor as well as sharing a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by the Cast of a Motion Picture. He played Sherlock Holmes in the BBC TV Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles (shown in the States on PBS) before joining the cast of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), starring Sean Connery.
In the American blockbuster Van Helsing, Roxburgh joined fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman in the tale about a vampire hunter (Jackman) out to get Count Dracula (Roxburgh). Roxburgh also played a role in the feature film Stealth (2005) and provided the voice of Boron in the animated feature Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole 3D (2010).
Roxburgh's more recent projects include the adventure thriller Sanctum (2011), the drama Looking for Grace (2015), and the war drama Hacksaw Ridge (2016).
He married Italian actress Silvia Colloca (she played Verona in Van Helsing) in 2004. Their son was born in 2007 and they divide their time between Australia and London.