Claire van Kampen, theatre director and the wife of actor Mark Rylance, has died after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 71.
Rylance and her daughter Juliet confirmed in a statement to PEOPLE that she died “surrounded by family” in Kassel, Germany, on Rylance’s 65th birthday on Saturday, Jan. 18.
“Claire Louise van Kampen, Lady Rylance, has died this morning, Saturday the 18th of January at 11:47, in the ancient town of Kassel, Germany, surrounded by her family,” the family announced.
“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.”
Claire was described as “one of the funniest and inspiring women we have ever known” by her family. “We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter, and love,” they added.
Claire had been diagnosed with cancer before her death, BBC News reported.
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.
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, per Sky 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.
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, per The 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.”
