Richard Curtis
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Producers, directors and media figures
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE (born 8 November 1956), is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, best known for movies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually and the hit TV programmes Blackadder, Mr. Bean, and The Vicar of Dibley.
Biography
The son of an executive at Unilever, Curtis and his family lived in several different countries during his childhood, including Sweden and the Philippines. Part of the family still lives in Sydney, Australia. Curtis has lived in England since he was 11. He began school at Papplewick School, Ascot (as did his younger brother; Jamie), before he won a scholarship to Harrow, where he was head of school. He achieved a first-class degree in English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and it was at Oxford that he met, and began working with, Rowan Atkinson.
Early writing career
Curtis was the co-writer with Philip Pope of the Hee Bee Gee Bees' single "Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices)" released in 1980 to parody the style of a series of Bee Gees disco hits. He then began to write comedy for film and TV. He was a regular writer on the TV series Not the Nine O'Clock News, where he wrote many of the show's songs with Howard Goodall and many sketches, often with Rowan Atkinson. With Atkinson, and later Ben Elton, Curtis then worked from 1983-1989 on the Blackadder series, with each season about a different era in British history. Atkinson was the lead throughout. They followed this with the comedy series Mr. Bean. which ran from 1990-1995.
Film career
By this point, Curtis had already achieved his breakthrough success with the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. The 1994 film, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, was produced on a limited budget by the British production company Working Title Films. Working Title had already produced Curtis's 1989 film The Tall Guy, starring Jeff Goldblum. "Four Weddings" proved to be a colossal hit, the biggest grossing British film in history at that time. It made an international star of Grant, and Curtis's Oscar nomination for the script catapulted him to prominence. In addition, the film was nominated for Best Picture.
Curtis's next film was also for Working Title, which has remained his artistic home ever since. 1999's Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, broke the record set by "Four Weddings" to become the top-grossing British film of all time. The story of a lonely travel bookstore owner who falls in love with the world's most famous movie star was directed by Roger Michell.
Curtis's next film for Working Title was not an original script. Instead, he was heavily involved with the adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary from novel to film. Curtis knew the novel's writer Helen Fielding. Indeed, he has credited her with saying that his original script for "Four Weddings" was too upbeat and needed the addition of a funeral. He is credited on "Bridget Jones" as co-writer.
Two years later Curtis re-teamed with Working Title to write and direct Love Actually. Curtis has said in interviews that his favorite film is Robert Altman's Nashville and the sprawling, multi-character structure of Love Actually certainly seems to owe something to Altman. The film featured a who's who of British actors, including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman and Keira Knightley, in a loosely connected series of stories about people in and out of love in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
The Girl in the Cafe, was produced by the BBC and HBO as part of the Make Poverty History campaign's Live 8 efforts in 2005. The film stars Bill Nighy as a civil servant and Kelly Macdonald as a young woman with whom he falls in love while at a G8 summit in Iceland. Macdonald's character pushes him to ask whether the developed countries of the world cannot do more to help the most impoverished. The film was timed to air just before the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005. The film received 3 Emmy Awards in 2006 including Outstanding Made for Television Movie, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Kelly Macdonald, and an Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special trophy for Curtis himself.
In May 2007 he received the Fellowship award at the BAFTA Television awards. The award was given in recognition of his successful film career and his charity efforts.
Curtis cowrote with Anthony Minghella an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency which Minghella shot in the summer of 2007 in Botswana.
He is currently preparing his second film as writer/director, "The Boat The Rocked," about the DJs on pirate radio stations run on boats in the North Sea in the 1960's, when the BBC only broadcast two hours of pop music a week. It is scheduled to shoot in early 2008.
Campaigning
Curtis was a founder of both Comic Relief and Make Poverty History. He organised the Live 8 concerts with Bob Geldof to publicise poverty, particularly in Africa, and pressure G8 leaders to adopt his proposals for ending it. To date Comic Relief has raised £337 million.
He also spoke to the producer of American Idol to do a show where the celebrities were brought to Africa to experience the poverty level and raise charity in a American Idol: Idol Gives Back.
Personal life
Curtis lives in Walberswick, Suffolk - the same village in which former BBC1 controller Peter Fincham has a weekend retreat - with script editor and broadcaster Emma Freud, with whom he has four children.