Tuesday 23 July 2013
Friday 19 July 2013
Television appearances
- Blackadder: The Cavalier Years as Edmund Blackadder (1988)
- Nosenight sketches (1989)
- Mr Bean's Red Nose Day as Mr. Bean (1991)
- The Stonk music video as Mr Bean (1991)
- (I Wanna Be) Elected music video 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)
- The Greatest Worst Bits of Comic Relief as himself (2007)
- Live from Lambeth Palace sketches as the Archbishop of Canterbury (2013)
Personal Life Of Mr Rowan Sebastian Atkinson
Marriage and children
Rowan Atkinson first met Sunetra Sastry in the late 1980s, when she was working as a make-up artist with the BBC. Sastry is the daughter of an Indian father and a British mother. The couple married at the Russian Tea Room in New York City on 5 February 1990. They have two children and live in Apethorpe, Northamptonshire near Corby as well as in Ipsden, Oxfordshire and in Highbury, London. In October 2010, his Blackadder co-star Stephen Fry confessed on The Rob Brydon Show and in his second autobiography (The Fry Chronicles) that, although he was already openly homosexual at the time, he had considered asking Sastry (who was his make-up artist) out. When Atkinson came to him one day and asked if he could swap make-up artists because he wanted to ask Sastry out, 'all idea of [his] asking out Sunetra left [him]'. Fry was best man at Atkinson's wedding in 1990. Atkinson was formerly in a relationship with actress Leslie Ash.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, which they felt would give overwhelming power to religious groups to impose censorship on the arts. In 2009, he criticised homophobic speech legislation, saying that the House of Lords must vote against a government attempt to remove a free speech clause in an anti-gay hate law. In 2012 he voiced his support for the Reform Section 5 campaign, which aims to reform or repeal Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, particularly its statement that an insult can be grounds for arrest and punishment. It is a reaction to several recent high-profile arrests, which Atkinson sees as a restriction of freedom of expression.Cars
With an estimated wealth of approximately £85 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, Octane, Evo, and "SuperClassics", a short-lived UK magazine, in which he reviewed the McLaren F1 in 1995.Atkinson holds a category C+E (formerly 'Class 1') lorry driving licence, gained in 1981, because lorries held a fascination for him, and to ensure employment as a young actor. He has also used this skill when filming comedy material. In 1991, he starred in the self-penned The Driven Man, a series of sketches featuring Atkinson driving around London trying to solve his obsession with cars, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists. A lover of and participant in car racing, he appeared as racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle in 1995.
Atkinson has raced in other cars, including a Renault 5 GT Turbo for two seasons for its one make series. He owns a McLaren F1, which was involved in an accident in Cabus, near Garstang, Lancashire with an Austin Metro in October 1999. It was damaged again in a serious crash in August 2011 when it caught fire after Atkinson reportedly lost control and hit a tree. He also owns a Honda NSX. Other cars he owns include an Audi A8, and a Honda Civic Hybrid.
The Conservative Party politician Alan Clark, himself a devotee of classic motor cars, recorded in his published Diaries a 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 chétif."
One car Atkinson has said he 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."
He appeared in episode 4, series 17 of Top Gear in the "Star in a reasonably priced car" section, where he drove the Kia Cee'd on the test track in 1:42.2, taking first place on the board, but was later beaten by Matt LeBlanc during the second episode of the eighteenth series, with a lap time of 1:42.1.
He attended the inaugural Indian Grand Prix as a guest of McLaren. Atkinson's anguished reaction to the Lap 24 incident between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, was shown during replays of the collision.
Mr Bean's real life
He has been listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest actors in British comedy[4] and amongst the top 50 comedians ever, in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians. He has also had cinematic success with his performances in the Mr. Bean movie adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday and in Johnny English and its sequel Johnny English Reborn.
Atkinson, the youngest of four brothers, was born in Consett, County Durham, England.[6] His parents were Eric Atkinson, a farmer and company director, and Ella May (née Bainbridge), who married on 29 June 1945.[6] His three older brothers were Paul, who died as an infant, Rodney, a Eurosceptic economist who narrowly lost the United Kingdom Independence Party leadership election in 2000, and Rupert.[7][8] Atkinson was brought up Anglican,[9] and was educated at Durham Choristers School, St. Bees School, and Newcastle University.[10] In 1975, he continued for the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen's College, Oxford, the same college his father matriculated at in 1935,[11] and which made Atkinson an Honorary Fellow in 2006.[12] First winning national attention in the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1976,[10] he had already written and performed early sketches for shows in Oxford by the Etceteras – the revue group of the Experimental Theatre Club (ETC) and for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), meeting writer Richard Curtis[10] and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.
Awards
The first episode won the Golden Rose, as well as two other major prizes at the 1991 Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival in Montreux. In the UK, the episode "The Curse of Mr. Bean" was nominated for a number of BAFTA awards; "Best Light Entertainment Programme" in 1991, "Best Comedy" (Programme or Series) in 1991, and Atkinson was nominated three times for "Best Light Entertainment Performance" in 1991 and 1994.
| MR BEAN Rowan Atkinson |
Characters and recurring props
Mr. Bean often seems unaware of basic aspects of the way the world works, and the programme usually features his attempts at what would normally be considered simple tasks, such as going swimming, using a television set, redecorating or going to church. The humour largely comes from his original (and often absurd) solutions to problems and his total disregard for others when solving them, his pettiness, and occasional malevolence.
At the beginning of episode two onwards, Mr. Bean falls from the sky in a beam of light, accompanied by a choir singing Ecce homo qui est faba ("Behold the man who is a bean"). These opening sequences were initially in black and white in episodes two and three, and were intended by the producers to show his status as an "ordinary man cast into the spotlight". However, later episodes showed Mr. Bean dropping from the night sky in a deserted London street against the backdrop of St. Paul's Cathedral. At the end of episodes three and six he is also shown being sucked right back up into the sky in the respective background scenes (black scene in episode 3 and street scene in episode 6). Atkinson himself has acknowledged that Bean "has a slightly alien aspect to him".[13] In the animated series (episode 38, "Double Trouble") he is taken inside a spacecraft with "aliens" who look exactly like him and even have their own plushy toys. In an obvious homage, the aliens send him back home in a beam of light similar to the opening of the original Mr. Bean series. Whether Bean himself is an extraterrestrial is not clear. He lives in Flat 2, 12 Arbour Road, London.
Mr. Bean is a British comedy television programme series of only 14 - 25 minute episodes written by and starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character. Different episodes were also written by Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis and one by Ben Elton. The Mr. Bean pilot episode was broadcast on ITV on 1 January 1990, with the last television episode, "Goodnight Mr. Bean" broadcast on 31 October 1995.[2] The final episode, "Hair by Mr. Bean of London", was a video exclusive released on 15 November 1995, but not broadcast in the UK until 2006.
Based on a character originally developed by Atkinson while he was studying for his master's degree at Oxford University, the series follows the exploits of Mr. Bean, described by Atkinson as "a child in a grown man's body", in solving various problems presented by everyday tasks and often causing disruption in the process.[3] Bean rarely speaks, and the largely physical humour of the series is derived from his interactions with other people and his unusual solutions to situations. The series was influenced by physical performers such as Jacques Tati and comic actors from silent films.[3]
During its five-year run, the series gained large UK audience figures, including 18.74 million for the 1991 episode "The Trouble with Mr. Bean".[4] The series has been the recipient of a number of international awards, including the Rose d'Or. The show has been sold in 245 territories worldwide, and has inspired an animated cartoon spin-off, two feature films, and an appearance at the London 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.
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