Claire van Kampen
Claire van Kampen is the lovely wife of Academy Award winning actor, Mark Rylance. The English couple has been married for years, meet Mrs. van Kampen below.
Her husband who is also a theatre director and playwright, was born David Mark Rylance Waters on January 18, 1960.
He trained during the late 1970s at London’s famous Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Mark made his professional stage debut in 1980 at the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre.
He is widely known for his work in the Broadway and London productions of Boeing Boeing, Jerusalem, Richard III, and Twelfth Night.
He was the artistic director of the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London for a decade.
In 2015, Mark won the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies. He is also a Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor.
Mark has been happily married to wife, Claire since 1989. The couple met two years prior while working on a production of The Wandering Jew at the National Theatre.
Director, Composer and Playwright Claire van Kampen was born Claire Louise on November 1953 in London.
Before Claire and Mark met, she was married to Chris van Kampen with whom she became the mother of two daughters: Juliet and Nataasha –who sadly died aged 28 from a brain haemorrhage in 2012.
Following her divorce form her architect husband, she and Mark tied the knot on December 21, 1989 in Oxfordshire. He adopted both her daughters. Nataasha worked as a production designer while Juliet Rylance, has entered her stepfather’s profession.
Being in the same industry, the couple have always been very supportive to one another since the very beginning, cementing their long time marriage. Claire van Kampen is her hubby’s frequent collaborator. In 1999 the co-founded the theatre company Phoebus Cart.
The blonde was trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music for five years. In 1986, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Royal National Theatre.
Since the opening of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 1997, van Kampen has been the Director of Theatre Music, creating both period and contemporary music for 30 of the Globe’s productions – including the ‘jazz’ Macbeth in 2001, and The Golden Ass in 2002, which contained a 30-minute opera Cupid and Psyche.
In 2007 she was awarded the Vero Nihil Verius award. Claire is also known as Lady Rylance after her hubby received a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to theatre.
The couple currently resides in London, with their Jack Russell terrier, Apache, and a cat named, Ethel.
You can find Claire van Kampen on Twitter here.
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