From the Space Race to Obi-Wan: Why 2026 Has Been Quite a Year for Rhys Ifans
THERE cannot be many actors who could spend one year moving from the Soviet space programme to a Parkinson’s drama at the Toronto International Film Festival and then finish it by becoming Obi-Wan Kenobi – in Welsh.
But then Rhys Ifans has never had a particularly predictable career.
The Welsh actor who burst into international consciousness as Spike in Notting Hill has subsequently played everything from Howard Marks and Rasputin to a Marvel supervillain, a Harry Potter eccentric and the scheming Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon.
Even by those standards, however, 2026 is turning into a remarkable year.
Behind the Iron Curtain in Star City
The first major chapter arrived in May with Apple TV’s Star City.
Created by the team behind For All Mankind, the eight-part drama takes that series’ alternative history of the space race and turns the telescope around. Instead of concentrating on the American programme, Star City heads behind the Iron Curtain and explores the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers of the Soviet Union.
Ifans has one of its leading roles as the Chief Designer, alongside Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey and Alice Englert. The series premiered globally on Apple TV on 29 May and ran until 10 July.
It was another substantial international television role for an actor who has become as comfortable in prestige drama as he once seemed in anarchic comedy.
And it would have been enough to constitute a pretty productive year on its own.
It wasn’t even close.
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Toronto comes calling
September brought an entirely different Rhys Ifans.
Onwards and Sideways received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, pairing Ifans with acclaimed American actor Laura Linney.
Directed by Shakespeare in Love and Operation Mincemeat director John Madden, the film follows two strangers whose lives become intertwined after they are both diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease on the same morning.
Ifans plays Tony Evans, a widowed deputy headteacher, while Linney plays musician and composer Emma Dretzin. The screenplay comes from Paul Mayhew-Archer, whose own experience of living with Parkinson’s informs the story. Ifans is also one of the film’s executive producers.
The subject could hardly be further removed from dragons, comic-book villains or Soviet space programmes.
That is precisely what makes it interesting.
Early reaction from Toronto has repeatedly highlighted the central performances. The Guardian described the film as being powered by Ifans and Linney, while other festival reviews have similarly emphasised the warmth and emotional weight the pair bring to what could have been difficult material.
British audiences will not have too long to wait. Onwards and Sideways is due in UK cinemas on 6 November, with a BBC One and BBC iPlayer showing to follow.
So there is every chance that Rhys Ifans will be back in the entertainment headlines again before the year is out.
And then things get even more Welsh.
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Obi-Wan Kenobi – yn Gymraeg
On Christmas Day, one of cinema’s most famous stories is getting a historic Welsh makeover.
Star Wars: Gobaith Newydd will become the first official Welsh-language version of Star Wars: A New Hope, produced by Lucasfilm and Disney in collaboration with S4C and Creative Wales.
And Rhys Ifans has been handed one of its most iconic parts.
He will voice Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Alongside him is another actor enjoying an extraordinary 2026, Matthew Rhys, as Han Solo. Aimee-Ffion Edwards voices Princess Leia, Osian Morgan is Luke Skywalker and Mark Lewis Jones takes on Darth Vader. Rhys’s brother Llŷr Ifans is also involved, voicing C-3PO. The Welsh-language film will be available through S4C from Christmas Day.
It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate late-year role for an actor whose Welsh identity has remained visible throughout an increasingly international career.
And there is a lovely Ewegottalove circle to it.
Just days ago we were looking at the extraordinary story of how a full-size Millennium Falcon was secretly constructed in Pembroke Dock for The Empire Strikes Back. Now, almost half a century later, two of Wales’s best-known actors are giving Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi Welsh voices.
Sometimes Wales’s links with the world’s biggest cultural phenomena really are hiding in plain sight.
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From Haverfordwest to Hollywood – without becoming predictable
Perhaps that is the most interesting thing about Rhys Ifans in 2026.
This is not simply an actor having a busy year. It is the variety of the work.
One project places him at the centre of a lavish international streaming drama. Another asks him to portray an ordinary man confronting a life-changing diagnosis. A third turns one of Hollywood’s most famous films into an event celebrating the Welsh language.
There is very little connecting those three performances except the man playing them.
That has, in many ways, always been the point of Rhys Ifans.
The actor who became instantly recognisable through Twin Town and Notting Hill could easily have spent the next three decades playing variations on the wild-eyed eccentric.
Instead came Harry Potter, The Amazing Spider-Man, Mr Nice, Anonymous, Elementary, House of the Dragon, Nyad and many more.
Now add a Soviet rocket designer, Tony Evans and Obi-Wan Kenobi to the list.
At 59, Rhys Ifans doesn’t appear particularly interested in settling into one kind of role.
And 2026 may be providing one of the best demonstrations of that yet.
Did Ewe Know?
Long before Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rhys Ifans had already ventured into the Star Wars universe in a rather different way — his Star City co-star Josef Davies previously appeared in Andor. So even before Gobaith Newydd arrives at Christmas, 2026 has contained another small Star Wars connection in the Ifans orbit.