Georgina Elizabeth Rylance (born 20 April 1976) is an English actress, best known for Dinotopia .
Born in Ladbroke Grove in 1976, [1] [2] Rylance has a younger sister, Charlotte, and is the daughter of Judge John Rylance KC, a circuit judge, by his marriage to Philippa Bailey. [3] She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School, London, Downe House School, St Edward's School, Oxford, [4] and Oxford Brookes University. [2]
After being recruited in a pub on the Portobello Road, London, during the Notting Hill Carnival, the eighteen-year-old Rylance embarked on a short modelling career which included a Coca-Cola commercial. However, it ended when she accepted a place at Oxford Brookes to read politics and publishing. [2]
After leaving Oxford Brookes, Rylance trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. While she was a drama student, she was a regular in the audience at the Gate Theatre. [2] [5]
Rylance's first screen role was in Howard Davies's television movie Armadillo (2001) as Amabel. She played Marion Waldo in ABC's thirteen-part television series of Dinotopia , Helena in Spartacus (a TV movie for USA Network, 2004), Rachel Kelly, the on-screen daughter of Mark Rylance (unrelated), in The Government Inspector (2005), [6] and Suza in the film 7 Seconds (2005). Other television appearances include Manchild , Keen Eddie , As If , The Inspector Lynley Mysteries , Scooterman , New Tricks , Agatha Christie's Poirot , and War Machine . [4]
In 2015, Rylance starred in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya , [7] and in 2017 appeared in a revival of Noël Coward’s "This Was a Man" at the Finborough Theatre. [8] [9]
In 2008, Rylance met Greg Bailey, a Canadian doctor, in Los Angeles and in 2009 was living with him in an apartment in Knightsbridge, Westminster. The same year, she spent a month in Antarctica and several weeks in Peru, working in an orphanage. [2]
In April 2015, her father announced Rylance's engagement to Giuseppe (Peppe) Ciardi, [10] and their son was born in 2016. [11] Ciardi, a hedge fund manager, was a widower with three grown-up children, having lost his wife in a boating accident in 2005. [12]
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