John Rhys-Davies

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John Rhys-Davies (born May 5, 1944 in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, Wales) is a British actor. Born to Phyllis and Rhys Davies, a local mechanical engineer from the area, he was raised in Africa until he was sent to Truro School in Cornwall. The actor first gained widespread popularity for his performance as Portuguese captain Rodrigues in the 1980 miniseries, Shogun. Although he has dozens of films to his credit, Rhys-Davies is probably best known for his characters in two blockbuster film series: Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and the dwarf Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films (in which he also voiced Treebeard). He also had a lead role in the television series Sliders as Professor Maximillian Arturo from 1995 to 1997.

He was raised in England, Africa and Wales, and studied at RADA and the University of East Anglia. He has appeared in numerous television shows and TV miniseries, and has lent his distinctive deep, gruff voice to numerous video games and animated TV shows, including Gargoyles, as the character MacBeth. He appears in the full motion video cut scenes of computer games including Dune 2000 and the Wing Commander series. He also made several appearances on Star Trek: Voyager as a holodeck version of Leonardo da Vinci. In 2004 he was the unknowing subject of an elaborate internet prank that spread false rumors in several mainstream media sources that he was scheduled to play the role of General Grievous in Star Wars Episode III. [1]

Rhys-Davies is a member of the UK Conservative Party. As a university student in the '60s, he was a radical leftist, but he started to change his views around when he went to heckle a young local member of parliament, Margaret Thatcher. Rhys-Davies says that "she shot down the first two hecklers in such brilliant fashion that I decided I ought for once to shut up and listen."

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