"Dan Stevens"

Daniel Jonathan “Dan” Stevens (born 10 October 1982) is a British actor.

Stevens was adopted at birth and grew up in Croydon.  He has a younger brother who was also adopted.

After a rebellious youth, Stevens boarded at Tonbridge School, a public school in Kent, where he became interested in drama after auditioning for the title role in Macbeth with his teacher, novelist Jonathan Smith. Stevens went on to read English Literature at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and narrowly missed out on a first despite devoting much of his time to theatre during his final year. While at Cambridge he was a member of the Footlights alongside Stefan Golaszewski, Tim Key and Mark Watson and the Marlowe Society; he also gained acting experience with the National Youth Theatre. He was first spotted by director Sir Peter Hall at a production of Macbeth in which he played the title character alongside Hall's daughter, Rebecca, who played Lady Macbeth.

Stevens has worked extensively in theatre in Britain and the United States, alongside Peter Hall. He was nominated for an Ian Charleson Award for his portrayal of Orlando in Shakespeare's As You Like It for the Peter Hall Company in 2005.

In 2006, Stevens starred as Nick Guest in the BBC Television adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty. Later that year he played Simon Bliss in Hay Fever by Noël Coward at London's Haymarket Theatre, alongside Peter Bowles and Dame Judi Dench; the director was Peter Hall. He also as Lord Holmwood in an adaptation of Dracula for the BBC, and as Basil Brookes in the BBC Emmy-award-winning film, Maxwell.

In 2008, Stevens appeared in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, Sense & Sensibility, playing Edward Ferrars, and the West End revival of Noël Coward's The Vortex. In January 2009 he appeared on New Year's Day in Marple: Nemesis in ITV1 in Britain. In June 2009 he returned to the West End, playing Septimus Hodge in an acclaimed revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Duke of York's Theatre.

In 2011, Stevens guest-hosted an episode of Have I Got News For You, which aired 25 November of that year.

He is a member of the judging panel for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and also editor-at-large for The Junket, an online quarterly.

In March 2012, he completed shooting two films: Vamps, the latest film from Amy Heckerling, and Summer in February, an Edwardian romance set in an artist colony.

Stevens plays Matthew Crawley in the ITV series Downton Abbey, written by Julian Fellowes.

He is the narrator for several audiobooks, including The Angel's Game, Wolf Hall and War Horse.

Stevens is married to South African jazz vocalist-turned-singing teacher Susie Hariet. They met in 2006, when appearing at different theatres in Sheffield, England. The couple have two children: a daughter named Willow, born December 2009; and a son named Aubrey, born August 2012.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org