Early Life and Education
Elwes was born in Westminster, London. He is the third and youngest son of portrait-painter Dominick Elwes and interior designer Tessa Georgina Kennedy, who has Croatian, Anglo-Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His paternal grandfather was painter Simon Elwes, whose father was the diplomat and tenor Gervase Elwes (1866–1921). His brothers are Damian Elwes, an artist, and Cassian Elwes, a producer and agent. He was the stepson of Elliott Kastner, an American film producer. One of his ancestors is John Elwes, who is believed to be the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) (Elwes played five roles in the 2009 film adaptation of the novel).
He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Elwes attended Harrow School in London and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, and his father later committed suicide in 1975 when Elwes was 13. Elwes moved to the United States in 1981 to study acting at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. While living in New York, Elwes studied acting at both the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
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