Personal details
- Birth Date: 1982-10-10
- Height: 6′ (1.83 m)
- Birth Location: Croydon, Surrey, England, UK
- Children: (3 children) Willow Stevens
- Professions: Actor, Producer, Soundtrack
Dan Stevens popped into the world in Croydon, Surrey, back in October ‘82—so, yeah, a millennial with serious period drama energy. His folks? Both teachers. He got shipped off to Tonbridge School, then leveled up his acting chops at the National Youth Theatre. College days were at Cambridge, where he studied English Lit and basically lived for student theater. He even tackled Macbeth (the dude himself!) with Rebecca Hall as Lady Macbeth, which, I mean, talk about a killer student cast. During uni summers, he shot scenes in Slovakia for Hallmark’s Frankenstein, playing Henry Clerval—his big TV break dropped in 2004. Not long after, he snagged an Ian Charleson award nom for playing Orlando in As You Like It (directed by Peter Hall—yeah, that Peter Hall). That show even toured the States, so he got a taste of American theater life early on. Stevens kept busy—Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, then a role in The Romans in Britain in ‘06. But he really got noticed as Nick Guest in The Line of Beauty, a BBC mini-series about love, politics, and heartbreak in Thatcher’s Britain. While that aired, he was also onstage in Hay Fever with Judi Dench (casual) and then played Lord Holmwood in Dracula. 2007? Agatha Christie’s Nemesis and Maxwell (he played a financial guy dealing with the legendary press baron). By 2008, he was Edward Ferrars in Sense & Sensibility—a role beefed up for TV so viewers could actually care about Edward for once.
Back in 2012, this guy found himself buried in books—like, literally drowning in novels. He was tapped to be a judge for the Man Booker Prize, which, yeah, sounds fancy, but let’s be real: it meant plowing through 148 novels in just eight months. That’s wild. Imagine trying to keep all those stories straight in your head. Plot twists coming at you from every direction, characters blurring together, your eyes glazing over somewhere between page 200 and 400. I mean, how do you even pick a winner when every other day you’re sucked into a whole new world? The pressure must’ve been brutal, right? But hey, someone’s gotta do it, and apparently, he was the guy for the job. By the end, I bet he didn’t wanna see another book for a while—or maybe he just needed a really strong drink.
Honestly, leaving Downton Abbey to do something like 'The Guest'? Wild move, right? I mean, who sits there planning, “Yeah, next I’ll go for a bonkers action thriller with some dark comedy tossed in, maybe even get to play around with an American accent.” Nobody dreams that up in advance—way too specific and, honestly, sounds a little ridiculous on paper. But when the chance actually showed up, it just felt weirdly possible. Like, you don’t always get to choose the most logical next step in your career, and sometimes a role just lands in your lap and you have to run with it. You want to stretch a bit, test yourself out, see if you can pull off something totally unexpected. Plus, after all that period drama, who wouldn’t want to go for something with a bit more chaos and a lot less corset?
October 10, 1982
6′ (1.83 m)
Konidela Ram Charan
Croydon, Surrey, England, UK
Yes, Willow Stevens
42 years old