On Brothers & Sisters, Matthew Rhys plays Kevin Walker, the family lawyer who also happens to be gay.  Rhys has no trouble playing Kevin as he has portrayed homosexual characters before, and isn't worried about being stereotyped for gay roles.  In fact, he has some pretty steamy love scenes with both Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller in the upcoming movie, The Edge of Love.

“That's the flip side of the coin.  I mean you play the gay part and then you play the heterosexual part,” Rhys told The Star Online. “It's a balance of yin and yang, I guess.”

While Rhys is finding balance in work, his television persona is struggling to reconcile the competing forces in his life.

“He's both sides of the penny,” he said.  “On a professional level, he's this very confident lawyer who knows what he's doing and does it very well.  And on the flip side, his love life is a complete no-hoper.  He desperately tries to put that side of his life together. ”

Clearly, Rhys' Kevin is a complex individual, although he is only one among a diverse group of characters that Brothers & Sisters shows audiences every week.  The series is also known for its rich but complicated themes, and its quality writing, which was what initially drew Rhys to the show.

“The writing was very strong; I hadn't read any writing of a pilot like that for a long time,” Matthew Rhys said.  “You had some characters who interact beautifully on the page.  [Creator and writer Jon Robin Baitz] writes conflicts so well.”

While Rhys has no qualms about his Brothers & Sisters character, there is one thing that has proven to be quite challenging: speaking with an American accent.

“I do find it difficult,” Rhys, who was born and raised in Cardiff, South Wales.  “It's not something you can just do.  I always work at it.  It doesn't come naturally.”

He shares this burden with costar Rachel Griffiths, a native of Melbourne, Australia.  He and Griffiths maintain their American accent while on the set.

“When we talk in our own accent, it makes going back to the American accent so much harder,” he explained.

Rhys and Griffiths are not alone among the numerous foreign actors who have sought work in the United States.  Rhys thinks that, in the case of British actors, the surge is mainly due to the lack of jobs in Britain.

“I'm sure very soon the Americans will grow very tired of us,” he said.  “But God bless them for letting us work here.”


-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: The Star Online
(Image Courtesy of The Star Online)