Jude Law

Info

Full Name: Jude Law
Date of birth: December 29, 1972 (53 years old)
Location: Lewisham, London, England
Country: UK

Jude Law has been active for 2026 years, participating in 48 movies that average a 7.0/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

In September 2025 the Venice Film Festival gave him a ten minute standing ovation for playing Vladimir Putin. The year before he was in space dressed as a pirate in a 'Star Wars' series, and the year before that he was Captain Hook. In his fifties, Jude Law is taking the strangest parts of anyone in his generation, which is not at all what seemed likely when the British press was calling him the best looking man in the business.

He was born on 29 December 1972 in Lewisham, in south east London, and grew up in Blackheath. Both his parents were teachers who later set up a drama school in France; his sister Natasha is an illustrator. He is named Jude after the Thomas Hardy novel and the Beatles song.

He left school at seventeen to act, having already been through the National Youth Music Theatre and a part on the ITV soap 'Families'.

From the West End to Broadway

The stage made him. In 1994 he played Michael in Jean Cocteau's 'Les Parents terribles' in the West End and was nominated for an Olivier as most promising newcomer. The production moved to Broadway the following year as 'Indiscretions', where, at 22 and appearing nude every night opposite Kathleen Turner, he picked up his first Tony nomination.

He went back in 2009 with a 'Hamlet' that travelled from London to Broadway by way of Elsinore castle in Denmark, and which brought a second Tony nomination.

Dickie Greenleaf and the heartthrob years

On screen he started with 'Gattaca' (1997), as a paralysed former swimmer selling his genetic identity, and with 'Wilde', playing Lord Alfred Douglas.

What changed everything was Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (1999), the insufferable, magnetic rich boy Matt Damon envies to the point of murder. He learned the saxophone for it, won the BAFTA for best supporting actor and got his first Oscar nomination.

The next few years he worked with half the directors worth working with. He was the gigolo robot in Steven Spielberg's 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' (2001), which he trained in ballet for; the photographer hitman in Sam Mendes's 'Road to Perdition' (2002); and the Confederate deserter in 'Cold Mountain' (2003), again for Minghella and opposite Nicole Kidman, which brought a second Oscar nomination, this time as lead.

2004 was the year he overdid it. Six of his films came out, among them 'Closer', with Natalie Portman and Clive Owen; 'The Aviator', in which he plays Errol Flynn; 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow', which he also produced; and the remake of 'Alfie', Michael Caine's old part, which went badly. That stretch is when the papers started treating him as a character rather than an actor.

Then came 'The Holiday' (2006), the Nancy Meyers Christmas comedy with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet that still comes round every December, and 'Sleuth' (2007), which put him opposite Caine again.

Watson, Dumbledore and a pope

The second half of his career has been quieter and a good deal more interesting. He was Dr Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes' (2009) and 'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' (2011), both for Guy Ritchie with Robert Downey Jr., and he was one of the actors who stepped in for Heath Ledger on 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' (2009) after Ledger died mid shoot.

He worked twice for Steven Soderbergh, as the conspiracy blogger in 'Contagion' (2011) and in 'Side Effects' (2013). He did 'Anna Karenina' (2012) for Joe Wright, turned up in Wes Anderson's 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' (2014), and let himself be taken apart as a useless spy in 'Spy' (2015) with Melissa McCarthy.

At the commercial end he was the young Albus Dumbledore in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' (2018) and 'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore' (2022), and the Kree commander who lies to 'Captain Marvel' (2019).

Television handed him one of the best things he's done: Pius XIII in 'The Young Pope' (2016), Paolo Sorrentino's beautiful, cruel, wounded pontiff, which he carried on in 'The New Pope' (2020). The same year he made 'The Third Day' for HBO.

Smaller things have never stopped either: 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004), 'All the King's Men' (2006), 'My Blueberry Nights' (2007) for Wong Kar-wai, 'Hugo' (2011), the submarine thriller 'Black Sea' (2014) and the washed up gangster of 'Dom Hemingway' (2013), who spends the opening scene delivering a monologue naked in a prison cell.

Hook, Henry VIII and Putin

Since then he hasn't played the same note twice. He was Captain Hook in 'Peter Pan & Wendy' (2023) and a vast, rotting Henry VIII in 'Firebrand', opposite Alicia Vikander as Catherine Parr.

In 2024 he played a German doctor in the Galápagos in Ron Howard's 'Eden', with Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby, and an FBI agent chasing white supremacists in Justin Kurzel's 'The Order', which he produced as well. In between he put on an eyepatch for 'Skeleton Crew', the Disney+ 'Star Wars' series.

In September 2025 Netflix put out 'Black Rabbit', eight episodes with him as the owner of a fashionable New York restaurant whose brother, Jason Bateman, wrecks his life. It brought him a Golden Globe nomination in 2026.

And then there's Putin. In 'The Wizard of the Kremlin', which Olivier Assayas adapted from Giuliano da Empoli's novel, he plays the Russian president through his first years in power, seen through the spin doctor who built his story, played by Paul Dano. The film split the critics. His performance didn't: the ten minutes of applause in Venice were for him.

His private life was written about for years in more detail than he wanted. He was married to the actress Sadie Frost from 1997 to 2003 and they had three children, Rafferty, Iris and Rudy. He was then engaged to Sienna Miller, whom he met making 'Alfie', and in 2005 had to apologise publicly over an affair with his children's nanny. He was also one of the people whose phones were hacked by the 'News of the World', and he took the case to court.

He has seven children in all: after the first three came Sophia, born in 2009, Ada, in 2015, and two with the psychologist Phillipa Coan, whom he married in 2019. He produces through his own company, Riff Raff, and ahead of him is a Nancy Meyers comedy due in 2027, twenty years after 'The Holiday', with Penélope Cruz, Kieran Culkin and Owen Wilson. Not bad for the boy who was only ever going to be a face.