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Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson promoting the film Bean in 1997
Birth name	Rowan Sebastian Atkinson
Born	January 6, 1955 (age 53) Consett, County Durham
Genres	Physical comedy
Influences	Peter Sellers, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati 1
Influenced	Steve Pemberton
Spouse	Sunetra Sastry (1990-)
Notable works and roles	Blackadder The Thin Blue Line Mr. Bean
BAFTA Awards
Best Light Entertainment Performance 1981 Not the Nine O'Clock News 1990 Blackadder Goes Forth
Laurence Olivier Awards
Best Comedy Performance 1981 Rowan Atkinson in Revue

Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is an English comedian, actor and writer, famous for his title roles in the British television comedies Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line, and Mr. Bean. He has been listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy,² and amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians.³

Early life

Rowan Atkinson was born in Consett, County Durham in 1955.⁴ His parents were Eric Atkinson, a farmer and company director, and his wife Ella May (née Bambridge), who married on 29 June 1945.⁴ He has two elder brothers, Rodney Atkinson, a eurosceptic economist who narrowly lost the United Kingdom Independence Party leadership election in 2000, and Rupert Atkinson.⁵⁶

Atkinson was raised Anglican.⁷ He was educated at Durham Choristers School, followed by St Bees School, and studied electrical engineering at Newcastle University.⁸ He continued with an MSc at The Queen's College, Oxford, first achieving notice at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1976.⁸ At Oxford, he also acted and performed early sketches for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), the Oxford Revue and the Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), meeting writer Richard Curtis⁸ and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.

Career

Television

After he went to university, Atkinson toured with Angus Deayton as his straight man in an act that was eventually filmed for a television show. After the success of the show, he did a one-off pilot for ITV in 1979 called Canned Laughter. Atkinson then went on to do Not the Nine O'Clock News, produced by his friend John Lloyd. He starred on the show along with Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, and was one of the main sketch writers.

The success of Not the Nine O'Clock News led to his starring in the medieval sitcom The Black Adder, which he also co-wrote with Richard Curtis, in 1983. Despite a mixed reception, a second series was written, this time by Curtis and Ben Elton, and first screened in 1985. Blackadder II followed the fortunes of one of the descendants of Atkinson's original character, this time in the Elizabethan era. The same pattern was repeated in two sequels Blackadder the Third (1987) (set in the Regency era), and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) (set in World War I). The Blackadder series went on to become one of the most successful BBC situation comedies of all time, spawning television specials including Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988) and Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988).

Atkinson's other famous creation, the hapless Mr. Bean, first appeared on New Years Day in 1990 in a half-hour special for Thames Television. The character of Mr. Bean has been likened somewhat to a modern-day Charlie Chaplin. During this time, Atkinson appeared at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal in 1987 and 1989. Several sequels to Mr. Bean appeared on television in the 1990s, and it eventually made into a major motion picture in 1997. Entitled Bean, it was directed by Mel Smith, his former co-star from Not the Nine O'Clock News. A second movie was released in 2007 entitled Mr. Bean's Holiday.

Atkinson has fronted campaigns for Hitachi electrical goods, Fujifilm, and Give Blood. Most famously, he appeared as a hapless and error-prone espionage agent in a long-running series for Barclaycard, on which character his title role in Johnny English was based. In May 2008 he appeared in the BBC documentary series Comedy Map of Britain.

Film

Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, in Brussels, next to the Manneken Pis.

Atkinson's film career began in 1983 with a supporting part in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again and a leading role in Dead on Time with Nigel Hawthorne. He appeared in former Not the Nine O'Clock News co-star Mel Smith's directorial debut The Tall Guy in 1989. He also appeared alongside Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling in Roald Dahl's The Witches in 1990. In 1993 he played the part of Dexter Hayman in Hot Shots! Part Deux, a parody of Rambo III, starring Charlie Sheen.

Atkinson, with his turn as a verbally bumbling vicar, gained further recognition in the 1994 hit Four Weddings and a Funeral. That same year he featured in Walt Disney's The Lion King as Zazu the Hornbill. Atkinson continued to appear in supporting roles in successful comedies, including Rat Race (2001), Scooby-Doo (2002), and Love Actually (2003).

In addition to his supporting roles, Atkinson has also had success as a leading man. His television character Mr. Bean debuted on the big screen in 1997 with Bean to international success. A sequel, Mr. Bean's Holiday, was released in March 2007 and may be the last time he plays the character.⁹ He has also starred in the James Bond parody Johnny English in 2003. Keeping Mum (2005, released in the U.S. in 2006) was a departure for Atkinson, starring in a straight role.

Comedic style

One of his better-known trademark comic devices is over-articulation of the "B" sound, such as his pronunciation of "Bob" in a Blackadder episode.

Atkinson's style is often visually-based. This visual style, which has been compared to Charlie Chaplin, sets Atkinson apart as most modern television and film comedies rely heavily on dialogue, and stand-up comedy is mostly based on monologues. This talent for visual comedy has led to Atkinson being called "the man with the rubber face": comedic reference was made to this in an episode of Blackadder the Third, in which Baldrick (Tony Robinson) refers to his master, Mr. E. Blackadder as a "lazy, big nosed, rubber-faced bastard".

Stage

In early 2008 it was confirmed that Atkinson would fulfil a lifelong ambition and take on the role of Fagin in Lionel Bart's musical Oliver! which will be produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. He was quoted as saying, "In the 1980s I enjoyed doing a lot of West End theatre and since then have been distracted very much by Mr Bean and film-making. I had been thinking for some time about returning to the stage, and the idea of the role of Fagin has long intrigued me. I even had the part in a school production."¹⁰ The production will open for previews on 12th December 2008. The roles of Nancy and Oliver were selected by the British public in 2008 on the BBC talent show-themed television series, I'd Do Anything. Jodie Prenger, Gwion Jones, Harry Stott and Laurence Jefcoate won the roles.

Personal life

Marriage and children

Atkinson married Sunetra Sastry in 1990, having met her professionally on the set of Blackadder. They married quietly at the Russian Tea Room in New York City, U.S., with Stephen Fry acting as the best man. The couple have two children, Lily and Benjamin, and live in England in the Northamptonshire village of Apethorpe.

Politics

In June 2005, Atkinson led a coalition of the UK's most prominent actors and writers, including Nicholas Hytner, Stephen Fry and Ian McEwan, to the British Parliament in an attempt to force a review of the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill — on the grounds that the bill would give religious groups a "weapon of disproportionate power" whose threat would engender a culture of self-censorship among artists.

Cars

With an estimated wealth of £100 million, Atkinson is able to indulge his passion for cars that began with driving his mother's Morris Minor around the family farm. He has written for the British magazines Car and Evo.

Atkinson also holds a UK LGV licence, gained because lorries held a fascination for him, and to ensure employment as a young actor.

A lover of and participant in car racing, he appeared as racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle in 1995. In 1991, he starred in the self-penned The Driven Man, a series of sketches featuring Atkinson driving around London trying to solve his car-fetish, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists.¹¹

Atkinson's car collection is dominated by Aston Martins, including the DB7 Vantage used in Johnny English. His Aston Martin V8 Zagato, featuring a novelty registration plate, was driven by his character Ron Anderson in the film The Tall Guy. Atkinson was cited for speeding in the car, just as his character was in the movie. He also received a driving ban as a result of the incident.¹² He also races in his V8 Zagato, from which he escaped unhurt after crashing it into a barrier at an Aston Martin Owners Club event in Croft Circuit in 2001. He is reported to have placed an advanced order for a Morgan Aero Max, which costs £110,000.^{citation needed}

Atkinson has raced in other cars, including a Renault 5 GT Turbo for two seasons for its one make series. He owns one McLaren F1, which was involved in an accident with an Austin Metro.¹³ Other cars he owns include an Audi A8,¹⁴ and a Honda Civic Hybrid¹⁵.

The Conservative Party politician Alan Clark, himself a devotee of classic motor cars, recorded in his published Diaries this chance meeting with a man he later realised was Atkinson while driving through Oxfordshire in May 1984: "Just after leaving the motorway at Thame I noticed a dark red DBS V8 Aston Martin on the slip road with the bonnet up, a man unhappily bending over it. I told Jane to pull in and walked back. A DV8 in trouble is always good for a gloat." Clark writes that he gave Atkinson a lift in his Rolls Royce to the nearest telephone box, but was disappointed in his bland reaction to being recognised, noting that: "he didn't sparkle, was rather disappointing and chetif." ¹⁶

One car Atkinson will not own is a Porsche: "I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people — and I wish them no ill — are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one."¹⁷¹⁵

Television appearances

• The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979), a charity special for Amnesty International
• Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979–1982)
• Blackadder as Prince Edmund (Series 1), Lord Blackadder (Series 2), Edmund Blackadder (Series 3 & 4) & Ebenezer Blackadder (Blackadder's Christmas Carol) (1983-1989)
• Mr. Bean as Mr. Bean (1989–1995, 1997, 2002, 2007)
• Bernard and the Genie as Bernard's Boss (1991) (TV movie)
• Funny Business (1992), a documentary about the craft of comedy
• The Thin Blue Line as Inspector Raymond Fowler(1995–1996)
• Blackadder: Back and Forth as Blackadder (1999)
• The Comic Relief Red Nose Day telecasts, including appearing in:
  • Blackadder: The Cavalier Years as Edmund Blackadder (1988)
  • Nosenight sketches (1989)
  • Mr Bean's Red Nose Day as Mr Bean (1991)
  • (I Wanna Be) Elected as Mr Bean (1992)
  • Blind Date with Mr Bean as Mr Bean (1993)
  • Torvill and Bean as Mr Bean (1995)
  • "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death" as The Doctor (1999)
  • Popsters as Nasty Neville (2001)
  • Lying to Michael Jackson as Martin Bashir (2003)
  • Spider-Plant Man as Peter Piper and Spider-Plant Man (2005)
  • Mr Bean's Wedding as Mr Bean (2007)

Filmography

Live shows

• The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)
• The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (1981)
• Origami for Prince of Wales' 40th Birthday (1988)
• Rowan Atkinson Live, a DVD release of a filmed 1991 performance in Boston

1. A Warm Welcome
2. Fatal Beatings
3. And Now From Nazareth, The Amazing...
4. Invisible Man
5. The Good Loser
6. Elementary Dating
7. Guys After The Game
8. It Started With A Sneeze
9. With Friends Like These...
10. Tom , Dick and Harry

• Prince of Wales' 50th Birthday (1998)
• And Now From Nazareth, The Amazing... for We Are Most Amused - Prince of Wales' 60th Birthday (2008)
• Oliver! as Fagin (2009)

Discography

Albums

• Rowan Atkinson Live in Belfast (1980, re-released 1996)
• Not Just a Pretty Face (1987, re-released 1994)

Compilations

• The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)
• Not The Nine O'Clock News – The Album (1980)
• We Are Most Amused: The Best of British Comedy (1981)

Awards

• Variety Club Award for BBC Personality of the Year - 1980¹⁸
• BAFTA Best Light Entertainment Performance - 1989¹⁸

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Rowan Atkinson

• Rowan Atkinson at the Internet Movie Database
• Rowan Atkinson biography at BFI Screenonline