Biography
English actor Tom Riley essayed complicated men in such critical and audience favorites as "Da Vinci's Demons" (Starz/Fox, 2013-15), "Dark Heart" (ITV, 2016- ) and "The Nevers" (HBO, 2020- ). Born April 5, 1981 in Kent, England, he began performing in local stage productions at the age of four, but never actively considered a career as an actor until he attended the University of Birmingham in 2002. Though enrolled as an English literature major, Riley immersed himself in a school radio program and the university's theater program; he soon left Birmingham for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After gaining valuable experience as an actor, playwright and stage director, both at school at through his own theater company, Article 19, Riley began performing with the Royal Court Theatre in 2006. That same year, he made his feature film debut in the French spy drama "A Few Days in September" (2006), which starred Juliette Binoche and John Turturro; minor roles in British and American feature films and on television led to more substantive parts, most notably the ITV series "Lost in Austen" (2008), which cast him as Jane Austen's deceptively charming George Wickham, and the Irish comedy-drama "Happy Ever Afters" (2009), which he headlined opposite Sally Hawkins. A supporting turn as surgeon James Nesbitt's best friend on the medical drama "Monroe" (ITV, 2012) preceded his star-making turn as Leonardo Da Vinci in David S. Goyer's "Da Vinci's Demons" (Starz/Fox, 2013-15). The series, which imagined the famed artist/inventor as a spy embroiled in Italian politics during the Renaissance, was a critical favorite and Creative Emmy winner for Best Main Title and Title Theme, and led to starring roles for Riley in the series "The Collection" (Amazon Video, 2016) and "Dark Heart" (ITV, 2016- ). The former starred Riley and Tom Coyle as brothers and polar opposites who operated a Paris fashion house during World War II, while the latter was a graphic police drama with Riley as a detective who tackled the most harrowing cases as a means of coming to terms with his parents' unsolved murder. During this period, he also starred in "Ill Behaviour" (BBC Three, 2017), a miniseries about a terminally ill man whose friends forced him to undergo radical chemotherapy; the series co-starred American actress Lizzie Caplan, whom Riley married that same year. His busy scheduled continued without ceasing into 2018 and beyond, and soon included a starring role in "Ghost Light" (2018), a feature comedy about an arrogant actor who discovered that the "curse" associated with Shakespeare's "Macbeth" was true, and "The Nevers" (HBO, 2020- ), a fantasy series from Joss Whedon about a group of Victorian women with super powers.
