Matthew Rhys: ‘If I’d got the part as Bond, I’d have played him Welsh until they told me to stop’

Matthew Rhys is about as famous an American as a Welshman can get. The Cardiff-born actor got his big break in a Broadway adaptation of an all-American classic, playing Ben to Kathleen Turner’s Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. He starred as LA’s most famous attorney in HBO’s Perry Mason and won over audiences in the US cable hit Brothers & Sisters. He won an Emmy for his most famous role as agent Philip Jennings in the FX espionage drama called what else but The Americans – although to be fair, his character was a KGB spy.

It goes without saying, then, that Rhys does a great Yank accent. So much so that it’s a shock to hear him speak in the rolling consonants and round vowels of his birthplace when, on arriving for our interview, he asks for a packet of crisps. “I’m craving salt,” he says, smacking his lips. The 50-year-old is out of luck. There’s coffee and fruit, but no Walkers. He sits down, resigned to a crisp-less hour ahead. For what it’s worth, Rhys himself is so used to playing American that it comes as a surprise whenever he doesn’t have to fake it. “I can’t remember the last time I used my native accent,” he laughs.

Hallow Road is an exception. A winding rabbit hole of a film, it sees Rhys play a father – a Welsh father! – whose evening with his wife (Rosamund Pike) is driven off course by a phone call from their teen daughter: she’s hit someone while driving in the countryside. The next 80 minutes unfurl almost entirely inside their car as they race to find her.

The film – by British-Iranian director Babak Anvari – throws up several hypothetical questions, such as what lengths would you go to protect your kids? “I would 100 per cent go to prison for my child,” says Rhys, who shares three children with his wife, the actor Keri Russell. “That’s an instinctive answer. I wouldn’t even have to think about it.” And how far does that grace extend? Would he happily see the inside of a cell for Russell? “Yeah…” he ventures, a knowing smirk spreading across his face. “Though only because I know this is going in print.”

Hallow Road is a masterclass in tension. What begins as a neat thriller gradually gives way to something murkier and more uncertain, taking its cues from an old Celtic myth – the ghostly kind that Rhys grew up listening to at sleepovers and family gatherings. Rhys plays a dad in survival mode: every thought firing across his face as obvious as a bullet from a barrel. His character is worlds away from a steely Soviet agent operating undercover in Washington. Philip Jennings would know how to get out of this.

Years before he played Jennings, Rhys was up for the role of another spy; the spy – James Bond – before it went to Daniel Craig. “I was just one of many who went to Barbara Broccoli’s offices,” he insists now. Would his Bond have been Welsh, I wonder. “Well, I like to say Timothy Dalton was Welsh, but he wasn’t a very Welsh Bond,” says Rhys. “And there’s still a lot of prejudice, I find, against a Welsh accent – there’s always been a greater love for the Irish. With Bond, I think they probably would’ve gone for a toned-down version of Welsh. I would certainly have advocated for it until they told me not to!” Does he think the world needs a Welsh Bond? “Tell your editor: that’s the headline!”

The more I speak with Rhys, the more I come to mourn his potential take on 007. He has the requisite charm but, more importantly, an instant familiarity. The kind that would come in handy when trying to convince a stranger of your trustworthiness. He looks the part, too – his serious eyes (“A plastic surgeon took one look at me and knew I was Celtic; we have these hooded Eeyore eyes, which are very useful for playing sad”) are offset by dark-brown curls and a Superman dimple in his chin.

These days, he’s a full-time New Yorker, but Rhys grew up in Cardiff, the son of two schoolteachers. At home they spoke exclusively in Welsh – a tradition that Rhys does his best to uphold. “I’m teaching my kids as much as they’ll listen,” he laughs. “The eldest is very good because the bugger has been subjected to it the longest. Keeping Welsh alive, God bless him, in a small corner of Brooklyn.” It was after he landed a hip-thrusting role as Elvis in a school production that he auditioned for Rada, inspired by a boy in the year above, Ioan Gruffudd, who had just enrolled.

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After graduation, the parts started rolling in. In an early pinch-me moment, Rhys was cast opposite fellow Welshman Anthony Hopkins in 1999’s Titus. “I remember he invited me into his trailer, and he gave me three rules to follow: be on time; know your lines; be bold, and greater gods will come to your aid,” Rhys says now in a gruff imitation of his hero. He recalls those words as though they’re never far from his mind, tattooed on his very brain.

Next, he landed The Graduate, playing the eponymous, much younger man seduced by Kathleen Turner’s Mrs Robinson in a production in London. “To me, she was the epitome of Hollywood glamour,” he says now. “Just so cool. There’d be celebrities in the crowd, and they’d go back to her dressing room after the show, and she very kindly invited me too.” Nowadays, I suggest, Rhys is part of the A-list pack himself – no invitation necessary. “God no,” he laughs. “I’m not that tier. When I go to the theatre, I wouldn’t dare ask to go backstage to see the cast.”

He’s being modest, of course. The Americans made him, if not a household name, then surely a household face; at its peak in the 2010s, the spy-thriller brought in 4.7 million viewers per episode. It was praised by critics, received 18 Emmy nominations during its six-season run, and is commonly held up as an example of television’s golden age. More important than any of that, though, is the fact that it’s where Rhys met Russell – his wife and mother to his children.

In truth, they met once several years before at a kickball party hosted by Jennifer Grey, though Rhys may want to gloss over that initial meet-cute. He sliced open his thumb trying to impress Russell by opening a beer with his hand. He got a second shot when he found himself face-to-face with her at a chemistry read for The Americans. “She slapped me,” he says simply. “The scene, unbeknownst to me, involved a slap and the director told her to really go for it and she hit me so hard. I was in shock; my ears were ringing. I find it amusing that that’s how it all began…” He cracks a smile and quips: “And how it continues.” Love at first slap, you might say. “Oh yes, that’s a good one!”

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The couple initially tried to keep their relationship secret – Russell had children from a previous marriage, for one thing – but they threw the rumour mill into overdrive when they appeared in a very steamy photoshoot for GQ. Rhys wore a suit; Russell, lingerie, with her legs straddling her co-star and supposedly secret boyfriend. “God, I hated that photo shoot,” Rhys says now, shaking his head as if to erase the image of it from his etch-a-sketch mind. “It was like softcore porn.”

More than a decade later, they’re still together. Despite the fact that Rhys calls her his wife, they’re reportedly yet to tie the knot. He must see me craning for a look at his left hand because he obliges, flashing a ringless finger at me. “We just haven’t gotten around to it,” he says. “We have spoken about it, but the timing is never quite right. I should be more romantic, really.” And you get a tax break if you’re married, I suggest. “Oh yes, that’s very romantic: ‘Marry me Keri, we’ll get a tax break!’”

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Talk turns to milestones and then to ageing. Rhys is 50 now and facing the crises that come with it. “All the existential angst,” he says, only half-joking. “Knowing I’m never going to play Hamlet, for example, just to be a dizzying cliché… I’m down for dads now.” Recently, he found himself on a set when the actor playing his son walked in. “My first thought was, well that’s not feasible. And then you do the maths in your head, and you realise, ‘Oh God, yeah, it is viable that I could have a 30-year-old son.”

“Age is very heavily signposted in the industry,” he continues. “You have those conversations when your agent tells you, ‘You’re just too old to play these parts.’” He grabs at his chest theatrically as if stabbed in the heart. “I still feel 21!”

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There was a period between The Graduate and The Americans when the parts dried up. “It was almost 10 years of nothing.” Forlorn, he turned to the army – a decision that remains inexplicable even to himself. It was partly down to happenstance. Rhys happened to be walking past a recruiting office on Charing Cross Road when a sergeant spotted him staring through the window. “After that initial chat, I went in the next week for an interview with an officer, but he was so suspicious of me,” he says. “A week later, I got a rejection letter. It felt fitting, after a year and a half of being told I was failing at auditions, to find that I couldn’t even join the army.”

Years later, Rhys still can’t pinpoint why he signed up. As a child, he had a poster of Richard Burton in the war movie The Longest Day tacked on his bedroom wall, but he doesn’t think there’s any relation. “I really have no idea,” he says. What he does know is how different his life might’ve been had he been accepted. He lets the image linger for a moment: a life with no Jennings, no Russell, no New York. He shudders and backtracks, unwilling to let this alternative reality sink in any further: “Let’s be honest, I might not have made it past basic training.”

‘Hallow Road’ is in cinemas now