Ivan Simon Cary Elwes is an English actor credited as Cary Elwes, known for his performances in The Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Saw.
Elwes was born in London, England. His painter/advertising agent father Dominic Elwes and grandfather Simon Elwes were very well-known British portrait painters. His father had moved in the circles of high society (and been friends with Lord Lucan and Lady Annabel Goldsmith to whom he was also related) before he committed suicide in 1975. His mother, interior designer and shipping heiress Tessa Kennedy, also a Catholic, eloped with his father in 1958 at age 19 to great scandal. She is of Croatian and Anglo-Irish extraction. She has been married to Jewish-American Hollywood executive, Elliott Kastner, for many years, and they have a daughter, Milica Kastner.
Elwes descends from a devoutly Roman Catholic recusant family on his father's side (originally known as the "Cary-Elwes" family, but now many branches of the family are now simply known as "Elwes") which includes noted British monks and bishops, such as Abbott Columba Cary-Elwes, Archbishop Dudley Cary-Elwes and Father Luke Cary-Elwes. He himself was an altar boy at the Brompton Oratory. He is also a descendant of Guilford Dudley, whom he played in the movie Lady Jane.
Elwes attended West Acre House at Harrow School in England, and Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, where he studied, among other acting-related subjects, German Expressionist Film.
Elwes made an impressive acting debut in Mariek Kanievska's famous film Another Country (where he played James Harcourt, a young and sentimental gay boy from an Eton-esque traditional English boarding School), with Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. His first notable role was Guilford Dudley in the highly acclaimed British epic Lady Jane after being personally chosen by distinguished Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Trevor Nunn. After Elwes' success with this film, he turned down Trevor Nunn's offer to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in order to continue work in movies. His performance in Lady Jane led Director Rob Reiner to cast him in another leading role, this time as the stable boy turned hero Westley in the American comedy The Princess Bride, which required Elwes to do all of his own swordfighting and acrobatics. Elwes' breakthrough performance in The Princess Bride gained international acclaim and was his first major attempt at comedy. Prior to this film, he had no comedic experience, having only studied and worked in drama.
Elwes continued working steadily, varying between dramatic roles, as in the Academy Award-winning Glory, and comedic roles, as in Hot Shots!. He starred as the famous Robin Hood in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, parodying Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, respectively. ("Unlike other Robin Hoods," he quips in the film, taking aim directly at Costner, "I can speak with an English accent!"). Elwes continued to appear in such popular movies as Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Crush, The Jungle Book, Twister, Liar Liar, Cradle Will Rock, The Cat's Meow and "Kiss the Girls". He did not appear in another blockbuster until 2004 in the horror/thriller Saw. The same year he appeared in the Princess Bride-esque film Ella Enchanted, portraying the villain rather than the hero.
His voice-over works include the narrator in James Patterson's audio book The Jester[4] as well as characters in film and television animations such as Quest for Camelot, Hercules, Batman Beyond, and the English versions of the Japanese films Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and The Cat Returns. For the 2004 video game The Bard's Tale, he served as scriptwriter, improviser, and voice actor of the main character The Bard.
He has also performed in the Bob Balaban-directed off-Broadway dramatic stage play The Exonerated in New York during the March 18-23, 2003 week run.
In August 2005, he filed a lawsuit against his management firm and the producers of Saw. He alleged that he was promised "a minimum of one percent of the producers' net profits" and did not receive the full amount as promised.
Elwes has volunteered as an actor with the Young Storytellers Program. He makes an uncredited appearance as Lester Persky--the man who introduced Andy Warhol to Edie Sedgwick--in "Factory Girl". In 2007 he made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
