Date of Birth

20 December 1988, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Height

6' 1" (1.85 m)

Mini Biography

Rhys Wakefield is an Australian actor and director whose films have grossed over $550 million worldwide. He started out on the Australian TV series Home and Away where he starred in 363 episodes and has since starred in season 3 of HBO's True Detective, the Purge franchise, James Cameron's Sanctum, Hulu's Reprisal, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Feature Film by The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (formerly AFI) and the Film Critics Circle of Australia for his performance in The Black Balloon, starring alongside Toni Collette. He graduated from Australia's The McDonald College of Performing Arts in 2006.

As a filmmaker, Wakefield co-wrote and directed the short film, A Man Walks Into a Bar, which was a finalist at the Tropfest International Short Film Festival before attending UCLA's 'The Craft of the Director' in 2015. His screenplay, entitled 'Please Close the Gate' was a feature finalist at the 2016 Cinequest Film Festival Screenwriting Competition and was officially selected for the Beverly Hills Film Festival that same year. He was an associate producer on feature film, The Grand Son, and made his directorial debut with the feature-film, Berserk, which was released in American theaters on April 5th, 2019. Berserk stars Nick Cannon, James Roday, Nora Arnezeder, Erin Moriarty and was executive produced by Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Midnight Special, Insidious, Take Shelter).

Wakefield is also the director and co-creator of sci-fi podcast series, From Now, which is being developed into a TV Series with Amazon Studios. Featured in the WSJ and NY Times, From Now stars and is executive produced by Richard Madden and Brian Cox. The podcast series debuted in late December 2020 and peaked at number two overall in the Apple Podcast charts. 'This gripping sci-fi treat from QCode features several actors you know and love...You'll be hooked quickly.' -- New York Times

Trivia

• Went to the same school as Sarah Murdoch (O'Hare), Nikki Webster, Josh Quong Tart, Bojana Novakovic and many other prominent Australians in the entertainment industry. The McDonalds College of Performing arts in Sydney.
• Los Angeles, CA, USA: Filming "Cardboard Boxer". [October 2013]
• Jakarta, Indonesia: Filming "The Philosophers" [June 2011]
• Before he started training for Sanctum (2007) he could hold his breath for 45 seconds. After training and filming his record was one minute and twenty seconds.

Quotes

• [on the underpants scene in The Black Ballon]: I'm the kind of guy that gets nervous being half-naked in my room, so considering there was a whole crew as well as randoms in their cars watching... yeah, I was pretty freaked out about it.
• Uh, what can I say... Kissing a supermodel? All in a day's work! Actually, that was really nerve-wracking. I was more nervous to meet her than I was to meet Toni Collette, because I knew we'd have to get personal. And, you know, she's a supermodel... and I'm not. - On kissing Gemma Ward in The Black Balloon (2008)
• We wore massive tracksuits and laid out cushions so we could wrestle, and we played Twister and danced to '90s music so, by the time those kissing scenes happened, we felt really comfortable with each other. - On how the director of The Black Balloon (2008) helped Rhys and Gemma Ward break the barrier before their kissing scene in the movie
• I met the director's [Elissa Down] brother - whom Charlie is based on - and Luke Ford, who plays Charlie, and I went road-testing in character. We went around the shopping center and to the movies, and it was surprising to see how people reacted to us, how ignorant some people are about autism. Some people assumed he was some kind of axe-murderer out to get them, so they'd freeze up or they'd give us really weird stares like we were the freaks. - On road-testing for The Black Balloon (2008)
• I went on a dive in between the shoot [of Sanctum (2007)] that I didn't tell the producers about because I don't think that was really allowed. I was on holiday over New Years so I was in Fiji on this tiny island. I went diving with sharks for my first dive outside of training. I got out on the boat and the guy said "So you've dived before?" and I said "Oh yeah, I've dived a bunch of times." Then when I'm down there, I think I went through 60 minutes of air in half an hour. There were sharks surrounding me. It was amazing but I kept that to myself until toward the end of the shoot.