Age: 43
male
Matthew McNulty is a German-born British actor. His credits include See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006), Looking for Eric (2009), The Musketeers (2016), Cleaning Up (2019), and Domina (2021), and The Rising (2022). McNulty was born on 14 December 1982 in Hanover, Lower Saxony, West Germany, and lived in Berlin and Münster, before moving to Atherton, Greater Manchester, England, when he was 10 years old. He attended Hesketh Fletcher high school, Atherton, then furthered his education at Winstanley College in Wigan. At 15 years of age, he was a lead in a school play, and enjoyed the role enough to make acting a career choice. McNulty was attending drama classes in Manchester when casting director Judi Hayfield approached him to audition for his first feature film. He juggled working in demolition with performing.
In 1916, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Tsar Nicholas II hosts a ball at the Catherine Palace to celebrate the Romanov tricentennial. His mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, is visiting from Paris, France and gives a music box and a necklace inscribed with the words "Together in Paris" as parting gifts to her youngest granddaughter, 8-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia. The ball is suddenly interrupted by Grigori Rasputin, a sorcerer and the former royal adviser to the Romanov family until he was exiled for treason. Seeking revenge, Rasputin sold his soul in exchange for an unholy reliquary, which he uses to place a curse on the Romanovs, sparking the Russian Revolution. During the siege of the palace, only Marie and Anastasia are able to escape with the aid of 10-year-old servant boy Dimitri, who shows them a secret passageway in Anastasia's bedroom. Rasputin confronts the two royals outside on a frozen river, only to fall through the ice and drown. The pair manage to reach a moving train, but only Marie climbs aboard while Anastasia falls, hitting her head on the platform and suffering amnesia. Ten years later, Russia is under communist rule and Marie has publicly offered 10 million rubles for the safe return of her granddaughter.
