John Rhys-Davies

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Date of Birth : May 5th 1944

Rhys-Davies was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, to Welsh parents; Mary Margaretta Phyllis Jones, a nurse, and Rhys Davies, a mechanical engineer and colonial officer. Davies spent much of his childhood in his mother’s home town of Ammanford, Wales although he was also raised in Africa. He was sent to Truro School in Cornwall. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the University of East Anglia.

Rhys-Davies has also lent his distinctive deep, Welsh voice to many video games and animated television series, including Gargoyles, as the character Macbeth. He appears in the full motion video cut scenes of computer games including Ripper (as Vigo Haman) (1996), Dune 2000 (as Noree Moneo) (1998), and the Wing Commander series (as James Paladin Taggart). He also lent his vocal talents to the games Freelancer and Lords of Everquest (both in 2003) and the game Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, which was released with his narration on a CD ROM version in 1995. In 2004, he was the unknowing subject of an elaborate internet prank that spread false rumours in several mainstream media sources that he was scheduled to play the role of General Grievous in Star Wars Episode III.

In 2004, Rhys-Davies faced harsh criticism because of a magazine interview in which he compared the theme of The Lord of the Rings with the current situation of Western Europe, whose civilisation he described as being challenged by a rise of the Muslim population, stating:There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren’t bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well… By 2020, fifty percent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent… And don’t forget, coupled with this there is this collapse of numbers. Western Europeans are not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The populations of France, 52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7 million people.