Mark Rylance is mourning the loss of his wife, Claire van Kampen, who died of cancer at age 71 on Saturday, January 18 — his 65th birthday.
“Claire Louise van Kampen, Lady Rylance, has died this morning, Saturday the 18th of January at 11:47, in the ancient town of Kassel, Germany, surrounded by her family,” Rylance and their daughter Juliet announced in a statement.
“Claire has died of cancer on Mark Rylance’s 65th Birthday. Her youngest daughter having died in 2012, she leaves her eldest daughter, Juliet Rylance, her two husbands, and countless beloved friends in England and America.”
Claire — a British theatre director and composer who was the first female musical director at both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre — was described by her family as “one of the funniest and inspiring women we have ever known.”
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“We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter, and love,” they added.
Rylance married Claire in December 1989, and became stepfather to her children with ex-husband Chris van Kampen: Juliet, 45, and Nataasha, who died suddenly in 2012 at 28 after suffering a brain hemorrhage on board a flight from New York to London.
“It’s uncharted ground if something tragic like this happens to you. You become aware it has happened to a lot of people. You make your own decisions about how you get through it,” Rylance told The Sunday Times in 2016.
After Nataasha’s death, Rylance went on to be nominated for an Emmy and win a BAFTA for his role as Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII and a grieving father and widower, in the TV series Wolf Hall. He also won the Best Supporting actor Oscar in 2015 for his role in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
Claire was diagnosed with cancer prior to her passing. Born in London in 1953, she eventually trained at the Royal College of Music, studying piano and music theory, according to BBC News. She then embarked on a theatre career, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 and, a year later, the Royal National Theatre where she met Rylance. She later became an artistic associate to Rylance at the Globe Theatre, where she worked for 20 years.
She composed original scores for Broadway productions including True West, Boeing-Boeing and La Bete, as well as adaptations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard III.
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“Claire completely changed my life … She introduced me to that world of classical and modern music, and it was very much around music that we fell in love,” Rylance said of Claire in 2023, according to The Guardian.
“Claire came to me with two children whom I raised with her and Chris, but we never had children of our own so, to some degree, our projects have been our children. They are incredible,” he continued, adding Claire was “the rock of my life.”
