Mark Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent on 18 January 1960. According to our Western understanding of Chinese Astrology he was born in the year of the Pig; his western zodiac sign is Capricorn. Therefore he should be generous, cheerful, sensual, tolerant, fortunate, shy, romantic, deep, honest and imaginative by birth.

Mark's parents, Anne and David, both English teachers, moved to Connecticut (U.S.A.) when he was two. When Mark was nine the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin (U.S.A.) where he attended college and started acting. He played Hamlet in the school production in the autumn of 1976 - with his own father as the First Gravedigger. In the summer of 1977 he played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, during the University School of Milwaukee's First Shakespeare Festival. In the same year he successfully auditioned and obtained a scholarship for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London - where he trained under Hugh Cruttwell between 1978 and 1980. He also trained at the Chrysalis Theatre School, Balham, London, with Barbara Bridgmont.

The Glasgow Citizens' Theatre gave him his first job in 1980. He went on to play for the Royal Shakespeare Company both in Stratford upon Avon and London in 1982/83. He then worked with the London Theatre of Imagination, Royal Opera House, English Stage Company at the Royal Court (with Max Stafford Clark) and Mike Alfreds' Shared Experience at the Royal National Theatre in 1987, when he met Claire van Kampen, musician and composer (the first female Musical Director at the RNT and RSC, and at the same time), whom he married two years later.

In 1988 Mark returned to the RSC to play Hamlet in Ron Daniels' acclaimed production that toured Ireland and England for a year. The play then ran in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Mark alternated Hamlet with Romeo in the production of Romeo & Juliet that inaugurated the rebuilt Swan Theatre in Stratford. Hamlet toured to the United States for two years.

In 1990 he and Claire founded "Phoebus' Cart", their own theatre company, that played The Tempest in magic sites during the summer of 1991: the Rollright Stones Circle in Oxfordshire, the ruins of Corfe Castle in Devon and the site of Shakespeare's Globe in London. Mark was then invited by Sam Wanamaker to join the Board of Directors of Shakespeare's Globe, thus getting involved with the project that is now his job.

In the same year he played the lead in Gillies Mackinnon's film The Grass Arena, and won the BBC Radio Times Award for Best Newcomer.

In 1993 he starred in Matthew Warchus' production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Queen's Theatre, produced by Thelma Holt. His Benedick won him an Olivier Award for Best Actor.

Since 1995 he is the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. He has directed and acted in every season, both in Shakespeare's works and those of his contemporaries. Under his directorate, the first new play for the Globe in 400 years, Augustine's Oak, by Peter Oswald, was performed in 1999. Claire van Kampen is now Artistic Associate and Director of theatre Music at the Globe.