VINCENT GRASS (Doctor Cornelius) is a native of Belgium

VINCENT GRASS (Doctor Cornelius) is a native of Belgium who began his acting studies as a boy growing up in Brussels. Born into a classically-trained musical family (his father was a conductor, his mother a classical singer), Grass opted to pursue his love of acting, attending the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, where he made his stage debut in a dozen or so plays. Because of his musical heritage, he also fronted a local cover band called Crash, where he learned to speak English by memorizing the lyrics to some of the most popular rock songs of the 1960s.

After completing his studies in Brussels, he headed to England, where he honed his craft at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), starring in several LAMDA Theatre Club productions including “The Plain Dealer,” directed by Norman Ayrton.

Grass maintains a very busy career (in both English and French) on the stage, on television and in motion pictures from his home base in Paris, where he has been living for thirty years. He has worked for such directors as Roland Joffe (“Vatel”), Mike Binder (“Four Play”), Agneska Holland (“To Kill A Priest,” the French telefilm “Largo Desolato”), Jacques Demy (“Lady Oscar”) and Peter Greenaway (“The Tulse Luper Suitcases II”).

His list of French movie credits includes Valerie Lemercier’s “Palais Royal,” Chris Nahon’s “Empire of the Wolves” (“L’Empire des loups”), Gerard Corbiau’s “The King Is Dancing” (“Le Roi danse”), Claude Berri’s “Uranus,” Michel Blanc’s “Dead Tired” (“Grosse fatigue”), Catherine Corsini’s “Les Amoureux,” the Dardenne’s “Je Pense a vous,” Bertrand Blier’s “Thank You Life (“Merci la vie”) and Alain Berliner’s “My Life in Pink” (“Ma Vie en rose,” a film festival favorite in 1997 and winner of the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film). He has also appeared in several short films, most notably “La Carte postale,” directed by Vivian Goffette, which earned an Oscar nomination in 1999 as Best Live Action Short. Following his role in Narnia, he joined actress Isabelle Huppert in Rithy Panh’s film "Un barrage contre le Pacifique" on location in Cambodia.

For French television, Grass has appeared in dozens of series and telefilms, including “David Nolande,” “Louis La Brocante,” “Police District,” “Le Frère Irlandais,” “Julie Lescaut,” “Theo et Marie,” “L’Enfant de L’Absente,” “Jeunesse sans Dieu,” “Les Vacances de Maigret” and “Maigret ches les Flamands,” “Les Colonnes du ciel” and “Saint-Germain ou La négociation.” His English-language TV projects encompass Yves Simoneau’s “Napoleon,” the Emmy Award-winning “Horatio Hornblower,” “Sharpe’s Enemy,” “Memories of Midnight,” “Murder, Inc.” and “Night of the Fox.”

On the Paris stage, Grass has starred in three plays mounted at the Theatre Silvia Montfort -- “Masterclass” (“Staline Melodie”), “La Question D’Argent” and Miller’s “Death of A Salesman.” He appeared in Genet’s “High Surveillance” at the Theatre Le Lucernaire, and has appeared in many productions staged throughout Belgium, including “Mistero Buffo” at the Brussels National Opera, Kafka’s “The Castle” on a national tour, “Murder in the Cathedral” at the Flobecq Festival, Moliere’s “The Bourgeois Gentilhomme” at the National Theatre, Ionesco’s “The Killer” (“Tueur sans gages”) at Compagnie de Bruxelles, Hampton’s “Total Eclipse” (“Les Fils du Soleil”) at the Rideau de Bruxelles, Chekov’s “The Seagull” at the Theatre Royal de Namur and “The Knack, Or How to Get It” at the Waltra Theatre in Brussels.

He also enjoys a lucrative voice-over career in which he has dubbed the French dialogue for such projects as “The Matrix” (Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith), “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (John Rhys-Davies’ Gimli and Treebeard), Peter Firth (the British TV series “Spooks”) and George Miller’s recent Oscar-winning animated feature, “Happy Feet” (again, Hugo Weaving’s Noah the Elder), among many others.