Happy Birthday Dan! Lordy Lordy your 40s will be fabulous
Daniel Jonathan Stevens
Born 10 October 1982 in Croydon, Surrey UK Dan was adopted shortly after his birth and raised in Wales and later Sussex along with a brother (also adopted). His parents are retired teachers. During the summers when he was young, his family visited friends in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. He also briefly did an internship in Germany. He attended Holmewood House prep school at 10.
“I think growing up around people with faith is a very interesting thing to have witnessed. I feel very lucky,” he says. “My grandfather is a very devout man, and I found that dedication and the spirit with which it infused his whole life was very inspiring, really. I could only ever hope to be that at peace,”
At 13 he earned an academic scholarship to Tonbridge School in Kent where he starred in school productions of Macbeth, Murder in the Cathedral, and Henry IV Pt I under the guidance of Jonathan Smith. In the summers from the age of 15 he acted with the National Youth Theater under the guidance of his other mentor Sir Peter Hall. Dan, after completing his A levels, won another academic scholarship to study English Literature at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2001. There he joined the Marlowe Society (where he once again played Macbeth with friend and flat mate Rebecca Hall as Lady Macbeth) and was active in the Footlights (where he directed and performed in shows like Cabaret (I’d love to have seen that), comedic skits, writing and performing his own stand-up routines.
“I had very, very long hair. I was quite active when I was younger and, quite naïvely, I used to go on May Day marches every year and anti-capitalist things, before I really knew what any of that meant…now I’m a bit jaded.’”
He starred alongside Rebecca Hall in an acclaimed production under her father Sir Peter Hall’s direction of As You Like It in 2004 first in London and then in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They will go on to co-star in Permission as well as the new King Kong v Godzilla movie
Dan met his soon to be wife South African Royal Academy of Music post graduate scholar Susie Hariet in 2006 while performing Romans in Britain in Sheffield. They married in 2009.
“My wife once built me a bookcase,” chips in Stevens. “It is probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.” They have three children: Willow, Aubrey, and Eden and currently reside in a suburb of Los Angeles, CA.
“I don’t really fully engage with something unless I’m a little bit scared. I don’t want to be terrified stalk-still, but I don’t love the feeling that something’s too easy.”
In 2006 he starred as Nick Guest in the BBC adaptation of the Man Booker prize winning novel The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and adapted by Andrew Davies. Watch Dan in LoB and you’ll see how he can hold the screen with mesmerizing skill.
He starred in numerous plays over the next few years including Hay Fever with Dame Judi Dench and Arcadia playing Septimus Hodge. In 2006 he played Marban the Druid in Samuel West’s revival of The Romans in Britain to critical acclaim. Film and TV highlights would include 2008’s Sense & Sensibility as Edward Ferrars, 2009’s Hilde in which he first spoke fluent German playing Hildegarde Knef’s husband David Cameron. In 2010 he was cast as Matthew Crawley in ITV’s Downton Abbey which launched him to international success alongside Michelle Dockery when they memorably played Matthew and Mary Crawley.
Rebecca Eaton, PBS Masterpiece exec producer, noted that “Dan and Michelle had each other’s back and loved to cut loose before interviews. She said before one panel they were dancing in the wings as the music blasted the Petula Clark oldie “Downtown.”
In 2012 he moved with his family to New York City where he made his Broadway debut opposite Jessica Chastain in The Heiress at the Walter Kerr Theater in October 2012. They later lived in Brooklyn Heights for four years. Dan appeared in numerous movies including Summer in February, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Criminal Activities, and as Sir Lancelot in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. No Dan fan should miss his turn as Colin in High Maintenance (Rachel, Museebat, Solo)
In 2014 he earned critical acclaim and cult status for his role as David Collins in The Guest.
“I play characters who begin with the polite home invasion… Then I kill everyone or cause a political scandal.”
In March 2015 Dan was cast as The Beast in Walt Disney’s live action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Filming took up much of the summer of 2015 as the complicated process of bringing the Beast to life required him to essentially play the role once in a cgi suit with Emma Watson (Belle), another using MOVA technology to animate the Beast’s face, and a third for the voice and singing.
Beauty and the Beast had its world wide release 17 March 2017 and went on to earn over $1 billion at the world wide box office.
In 2016 he was cast as the lead David Haller in Noah Hawley’s take on the X Men franchise Legion for FX television. The show premiered in February 2017. The final season of Legion ended in August 2019 where it received almost 100% critical acclaim on Rotten Tomatoes.
Projects also released in 2017 included The Ticket, Norman, and Colossal. Marshall – where he played the prosecutor Lorin Willis going up against Chadwick Boseman’s Thurgood Marshall and saw him co star once again with Josh Gad. Dan played the young Charles Dickens in The Man Who Invented Christmas. This role will always be one of my very very favorites… that scene with the children never fails to make me smile… those kids adore him.
Other projects included Apostle, directed by Gareth Evans, the indie film directed by Alex Perry Ross, Her Smell with Elisabeth Moss, Lucy in the Sky and Call of the Wild. Eurovision, starring Will Ferrell. and Rachel McAdams was released in June 2020 on Netflix to great critical acclaim for Dan playing the billionaire, lion loving singer Alexander Lemtov.
The Rental, Blithe Spirit, and Solos are other projects of the 2020 pandemic era. In 2021 Dan starred in and received his first Best Actor nomination (German Film Awards, the Lolas) for the German language Film Ich bin dein Mensch (I’m Your Man) from Emmy award winning director Maria Schrader and starring Maren Eggert. I’m Your Man won Best Film of 2021 at the German Film Awards, Deutscher Filmpreis, known as the Lolas.
“Tom, played with elegant, fluent German” by Stevens who “delivers a performance that’s subtly comical and stylized. The “surreal twist of Stevens being Stevens is that he’s always the most human being onscreen, regardless of the role.”
Dan was the original star of Martin McDonagh play Hangmen as the brooding, mysterious character Peter Mooney. The play was supposed to run from February - July 2020 but was cut short because of the Covid-19 global pandemic. He had two glorious weeks on stage.
“Security is also terrifying. There’s something thrilling in not going the coziest route…” Dan will never take the easy route. It’s too boring lol :) “I look at other performances … whether it’s imitative or trying to absorb the modes of acting in my memory bank, I don’t know.”
In addition to film and theater work Dan has other interests. In 2012 Dan sat on the Man Booker literary prize committee. He’s written freelance stories and articles and is an acclaimed audiobook narrator having won prizes for reading Louisa Young’s My Dear I Wanted to Tell You and The Heroes’ Welcome and Stef Penney’s The Invisible Ones. He has read over 30 audio books and numerous BBC radio plays. He also has a lot of animated voice work– Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Earwig and the Witch, Cinema Toast, Central Park, The Sea Beast, and Love, Death, and Robots to name a few.
2022 work included the Starz mini series Gaslit playing John Dean in the Watergate scandal.
October 25 Dan will be in Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities episode The Outside, directed by friend and Legion Ch 10 director Ana Lily Amipour
November 2022 he will be playing Paul Snider (promoter and pimp and all around scary guy) in Kumail Nanjiani’s Welcome to Chippendales, with yes another ‘tache.
Future projects include a couple of indie horror films including Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo co starring with Hunter Schafer which will be released in 2023.
Currently he’s in Australia filming Godzilla v Kong 2 which will reunite him with The Guest mastermind Adam Wingard–this is a looooong wait until 2024. Hopefully it will also result in the greatly anticipated (at least by me) sequel to The Guest that Dan and Adam keep hinting at.
“There’s still some rebelling in me to be done. Maybe I’ll now rebel against my own career. For my next part I should choose something completely out of character to what everyone expects.”
To sum up (so you don’t just have to take my word for it lol: The Times of London (a paper usually averse to admitting Dan even exists, much less praise him) said: “More versatile than Eddie Redmayne, more nuanced than Tom Hiddleston (both Cambridge peers of Dan), Stevens has been effortlessly firing out these types of roles every since the Downton gamble paid off with a vibrant Hollywood career as a chameleonic leading man and eccentric supporting player.”
Wonderful post!!
