Matthew Rhys first to win two lead Emmys in one night — SkimNews
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- Matthew Rhys became the first person to win two lead acting Emmys in one night — best lead actor in a limited series for The Beast In Me and best lead actor in a comedy for Widow's Bay — at age 51.
- Early in his career, after a 2000 West End run in The Graduate opposite Kathleen Turner, Rhys was so desperate for work that he applied to join the British Army and received a polite rejection letter he still jokes about.
- After moving to Hollywood in 2006, Rhys formed the 'LA Tafia' with fellow Welsh actors Michael Sheen and Ioan Gruffudd — speaking Welsh, watching rugby, and dreaming of good fish and chips together at a British pub.
- Rhys met his partner Keri Russell on The Americans (2013–2018), where they played Russian spies; they became a couple in 2014, had son Sam in 2016, and Rhys speaks Welsh to Sam at home in New York in hopes he keeps the language for life.
- Rhys owns a 1939 wooden cruiser named Rarebit — after the Welsh cheese-on-toast dish — which is the same class of boat Ernest Hemingway once owned, and he has tried to sell her.
- Rhys dedicated his second Emmy 'to the great and good people of Wales,' saying 'diolch yn fawr iawn,' and has been revealed as the voice of Han Solo in the first-ever Welsh-language dub of Star Wars, timed to the franchise's 50th anniversary next year.
- In 2025, Rhys took on the role of Welsh icon Richard Burton in the one-man show Playing Burton to raise funds for the Welsh National Theatre — a play he first saw as a London student more than 30 years ago.
Why it matters: For a minority language rarely heard on Hollywood stages, having a two-time Emmy winner deliver part of his acceptance speech in Welsh and voice Han Solo in the first Welsh-language Star Wars is visibility Welsh-language media rarely gets. The historic sweep also cements Rhys as the first person to win two lead acting Emmys in a single ceremony.
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