Mark Rylance Mourns Wife Claire Van Kampen After She Dies at Age 71 on His Birthday: ‘Her Magic, Music, Laughter’

Mar. 15, 2025

Mark Rylance and Claire van Kampen.Photo:David M. Benett/Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty

David M. Benett/Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty

Claire van Kampen, theatre director and the wife of actorMark Rylance, has died after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 71.

“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.”

Kampen pictured in N.YC. in December 2017.Bruce Glikas/Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

Bruce Glikas/Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

Claire had been diagnosed with cancer before her death,BBC Newsreported.

She was born in London and trained at the Royal College of Music studying piano and music theory. Embarking on a theatre career, Claire joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986, where she became the first female musical director, according to the outlet.

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The following year, Claire joined the Royal National Theatre where she met Rylance while working as a musical director for a play he appeared in, perSky News U.K.She later became the associate to artistic director Rylance at the Globe Theatre, where she worked for 20 years.

The pair married in 1989 and Rylance became stepfather to Claire’s two daughters shared with her late ex-husband, Christopher van Kampen. Her youngest daughter Nataasha tragically died aged 28 following a brain hemorrhage in 2012, per Sky News.

Rylance and Kampen pictured in November 2022.Tibrina Hobson/Getty

Tibrina Hobson/Getty

In recent years, Claire worked as a Globe associate and senior research fellow for early modern music at the Globe Theatre and a creative associate at the Old Vic Theatre in London, BBC News reported.

Rylance said of his late wife in 2023, perThe Guardian, “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.”

“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 of his wife that she’s “the rock of my life.”

source: people.com