STEVE BENDELACK (Directed by)
HAMISH MCCOLL (Screenplay by)
ROBIN DRISCOLL (Screenplay by)
SIMON MCBURNEY (Story by/Executive Producer)
RICHARD CURTIS (Original Character Created by/Executive Producer)
PETER BENNETT-JONES (Produced by)
TIM BEVAN and ERIC FELLNER (Produced by)
BAZ IRVINE (Director of Photography)
MICHAEL CARLIN (Production Designer)
TONY CRANSTOUN (Editor)
PIERRE-YVES GAYRAUD (Costume Designer)
HOWARD GOODALL (Music by)

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

STEVE BENDELACK (Directed by) made his feature film debut in 2005 with The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, for Tiger Aspect and Universal.

He is a well-known director of television comedy, having worked on numerous series of classic British comedies, including Little Britain, French and Saunders, The Royle Family, The Lenny Henry Christmas Show, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Friday Night Armistice, The Saturday Night Armistice, Spitting Image, Fist of Fun and The League of Gentlemen, which won a BAFTA for Best Comedy in 2000 and an NME Award for Best Television Program in 2001. He has also directed the live shows of Frank Skinner, Newman and Baddiel and Lee Herring.

In 1994, Bendelack directed Peter and the Wolf: A Prokofiev Fantasy, narrated by Sting and conducted by Claudio Abbado; the film was nominated for a 1995 Grammy Award and won an International Emmy award for Performing Arts. He has also directed documentaries for BBC 2’s Arena.

In 1995, he made Radio Nights, a football documentary, and in 1999—as part of their Blondes strand—a documentary about Anita Ekberg.

Bendelack has also directed numerous commercials.

HAMISH MCCOLL (Screenplay by) is a writer and actor; he is a co-founder of The Right Size, a company that has created a unique style of comic theater since 1988. He co-wrote and performed in all of its productions, including Flight to Finland, Moose, Bewilderness, Hold Me Down, Stop Calling Me Vernon and the hit show Do You Come Here Often? This show won an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment in 1999 and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in New York City. The company’s smash hit The Play What I Wrote won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 2001 and McColl was nominated for Best Actor.

The show transferred to Broadway, where it was nominated for a Tony Award. In 2005, he co-wrote and starred in Ducktastic!, which was nominated for an Olivier as Best Entertainment. McColl has written several shows for radio—The Kodo Finish, The Remains of Foley & McColl, Foley & McColl: The Interviews—as well as This Way Up and This is Not About the Fridge for BBC television.

ROBIN DRISCOLL (Screenplay by) is a comedy writer, performer and cofounder of the Cliffhanger Theatre Company. Early productions included Gymslip Vicar, nominated in 1984 for a Society of West End Theatre Award for best comedy, and The World of Les & Robert, nominated for a Perrier Award in 1989.

Driscoll went on to co-write Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, as well as the television and animation series. Other writing and script editing credits include Saturday Night Live, Alas Smith & Jones and Lenny Henry’s Chef. He recently had great fun contributing to Flushed Away, a DreamWorks-Aardman Animations production.

Performance-wise, Driscoll has appeared in several television comedies: Waiting for God, Murder Most Horrid, Only Fools and Horses, The Fast Show, The Lenny Henry Show and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, to name but a few.

SIMON MCBURNEY (Story by/Executive Producer) is an actor, writer and director who was most recently seen starring in The Last King of Scotland, with Forest Whitaker. He also starred with Jennifer Aniston and Frances McDormand in Friends With Money. His feature films include Human Touch; Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate; Paul McGuigan’s The Reckoning; the title role of Eistenstein; Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow; Tom and Viv; Being Human; Mesmer; Cousin Bette; Onegin; Skaggerak; and Bright Young Things. He is currently shooting The Golden Compass.

In theater, McBurney is one of Europe’s leading directors. As the co-founder and artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité, he has devised, directed and acted in more than 30 productions, toured the world and won numerous international awards. His production of Mnemonic earned a Time Out Live Award, a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, a Lucille Lortel Award and the Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, among others.

His plays include Complicité’s The Elephant Vanishes at Lincoln Centre and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, starring Al Pacino, Paul Giamatti, Billy Crudup, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and Charles Durning. On Broadway, he directed the Complicité/Royal Court Theatre production of The Chairs, which received six Tony Nominations. In London, he recently both directed and starred in Complicité’s Measure for Measure and A Minute Too Late at the National Theatre.

RICHARD CURTIS (Original Character Created by/Executive Producer) was born in New Zealand in 1956 and raised in Manila, Stockholm, Folkestone and Warrington. He has now lived in London, off and on, for more than 20 years.

Curtis began writing comedy after leaving Oxford University in 1978. He had worked with Rowan Atkinson there—and continued to do so. His first job on television was writing for all four series of Not the Nine O’ Clock News for the BBC. He then went on to write the Blackadder series, a situation comedy set in four different eras of British history, always starring Rowan Atkinson in a different amusing haircut. The last three series were co-written with Ben Elton.

During these years, Curtis, Atkinson and Elton staged two West End comedy revues and Curtis wrote his first film, The Tall Guy, directed by Mel Smith and starring Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson (in her film debut) and Rowan Atkinson as a cruel, heartless comedian starring in a West End show. The film was not autobiographical and was produced by Working Title, with which Curtis has always worked since.

Back on television, Curtis and Atkinson then began work on Mr. Bean, and continued for some years to make intermittent programs starring the man in the tie who says very little. In 1991, Curtis wrote Bernard and the Genie, a wholesome Christmas fantasy starring Lenny Henry and Alan Cumming. In December 1993, Curtis was awarded the Writers Guild of Great Britain Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

His second film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, was directed by Mike Newell, produced by Duncan Kenworthy and released in March 1994. The film won a French César, an Australian Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Film. At the Academy Awards®, the film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.

In 1994, Curtis was made an MBE and started writing The Vicar of Dibley,a situation comedy for the BBC, starring Dawn French as a female vicar in a small village suspiciously full of eccentric characters. The movie Bean, co-written with Robin Driscoll, directed by Mel Smith and starring Rowan Atkinson, opened in Britain at the end of August 1997. It was about Mr. Bean’s visit to America and has more dialogue in it than you would expect. His next film, Notting Hill, starred Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant and was released in May 1999; for a while, it was the highest-earning British film ever. In 2001, Curtis was co-writer of the award-winning screenplay Bridget Jones’s Diary, starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and a nasty Hugh Grant. In 2003, he wrote and directed Love Actually, a story about lots of different kinds of love, set at Christmas and featuring 22 leading characters. He was also co-writer of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. In 2005, he wrote The Girl in the Café, a television drama based around the G8 summit, which received three Emmy awards in 2006.

Curtis is co-founder and vice-chairman of Comic Relief, the organization that runs Red Nose Day in Britain. He began the charity after a trip to Ethiopia during the famine of 1985. He has co-produced the 10 live nights of Comic Relief for the BBC since 1987. Comic Relief has made over £450,000,000 for charity projects in Africa and the

U.K. Curtis was a founding member of the Make Poverty History coalition and worked throughout 2004 and 2005 on the campaign and on Live 8, which concentrated on Trade Justice, more and better aid and debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries. He is now married to Emma Freud and they have a daughter, Scarlett, and three sons, Jake, Charlie and Spike. In 2000, he was made a CBE.

PETER BENNETT-JONES (Produced by) is founder and chairman of the Tiger Aspect Group and of PBJ Management. Tiger Aspect is one of the U.K.’s leading independent television and film production companies, with numerous award-winning credits for a broad range of work including Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, Robin Hood, Murphy’s Law, Benidorm, Omagh and Billy Elliot. PBJ Management clients include Rowan Atkinson, Barry Humphries, Lenny Henry, Howard Goodall, Bill Bailey, Harry Enfield, Reeves & Mortimer, Dom Joly, Eddie Izzard, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris and The Mighty Boosh. Sister company, KBJ Management, represents leading television presenters.

He is chair of trustees of Comic Relief and Sport Relief.

Working Title Films, co-chaired by TIM BEVAN and ERIC FELLNER (Produced by) since 1992, is Europe’s leading film production company, making movies that defy boundaries as well as demographics.

Founded in 1983, Working Title has made more than 85 films that have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide. Its films have won four Academy Awards® (for Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo and Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth), 24 BAFTA Awards and prestigious prizes at the Cannes and Berlin International Film Festivals. Bevan and Fellner have been honored with two of the highest film awards given to British filmmakers: the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the Orange British Academy Film Awards (2004) and the Alexander Walker Film Award at the Evening Standard British Film Awards. They were both recently made CBEs (Commanders of the British Empire).

Working Title has enjoyed long and successful creative collaborations with filmmakers Richard Curtis, Stephen Daldry and the Coen brothers; as well as actors Rowan Atkinson, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, among others. Its worldwide successes (in addition to the above-mentioned) include Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral; Richard Curtis’ Love Actually; Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliott; Roger Michell’s Notting Hill; Mel Smith’s Bean; Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter; Peter Howitt’s Johnny English; Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Chris and Paul Weitz’s About a Boy; both Bridget Jones movies (directed by Sharon Maguire and Beeban Kidron, respectively); Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice; Kirk Jones’ Nanny McPhee; Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz; and Steve Bendelack’s Mr. Bean’s Holiday. The company has also found great success in the U.K. with Mark Mylod’s Ali G Indahouse, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, and Edgar Wright’s award-winning sleeper hit “rom zom com” (romantic zombie comedy) Shaun of the Dead.

The success of Billy Elliot on film has since been repeated on the London stage. Stephen Daldry and screenwriter Lee Hall reunited for a stage musical version in 2005, with songs composed by Sir Elton John. The hit production, marking Working Title’s debut theatrical venture (co-produced with Old Vic Prods.), continues to play to full houses in London and garnered nine 2005 Olivier Award nominations, including a win for Best New Musical. Preparations are now underway to take Billy Elliot to Sydney and then New York, where it will open in 2008.

Last year saw the release of Paul Greengrass’ United 93 to critical acclaim worldwide, leading to two BAFTA wins (for Best Direction and Best Editing) and an Academy Award® nomination for Best Director.

Forthcoming releases in 2007 include Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the long-awaited follow-up to the successful Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Clive Owen; Joe Wright’s Atonement, adapted from the book by Ian McEwan, starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley and Romola Garai; and Adam Brooks’ Definitely, Maybe, starring Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Derek Luke, Abigail Breslin, Elizabeth Banks and Rachel Weisz.

Films in pre-production and production include Nick Moore’s Wild Child, starring Emma Roberts; Beeban Kidron’s Hippie Hippie Shake, starring Cillian Murphy, Sienna Miller, Emma Booth and Max Minghella; Kevin Macdonald’s State of Play, starring Brad Pitt; Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, adapted by Peter Morgan from his play of the same name and starring Frank Langella and Michael Sheen; and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich.

After working for two years around the world in the music industry, BAZ IRVINE (Director of Photography) left his native Northern Ireland in 1989 to study film in London. He started working in the industry as clapper loader in 1991 on the Ken Loach film Raining Stones. For the next eight years, he moved up through the camera ranks, working on four more Ken Loach films, as well as The Full Monty, Tim Roth’s The War Zone and many other projects.

Since 1999, Irvine has worked as a director of photography in his own right on numerous commercials and music videos. One of his first short films, Relativity, won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002 and, in 2006, Martin McDonagh’s Six Shooter picked up numerous international awards, including the Academy Award® for Best Short Film.

Irvine shot his first feature, The Lives of the Saints, in 2006 for acclaimed stills photographer Rankin and Chris Cottam.

MICHAEL CARLIN (Production Designer) studied sculpture in Perth and Sydney and practiced as a fine artist before moving to London in the late ’80s to pursue a career in film. He worked in various capacities on independent films such as Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil and Iain Softley’s 1994 Beatles film Backbeat. At the same time, he also designed commercials and music videos for, amongst others, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Elton John and George Michael.

Carlin’s first film as production designer was Fever Pitch, starring Colin Firth. This was followed by Tim Roth’s The War Zone, starring Ray Winstone; Sandra Goldbacher’s Me Without You; and Julian Jarrold’s Crime and Punishment, for which he won a Royal Television Society Award for Best Production Design. After The Heart of Me, starring Paul Bettany and Helena Bonham Carter and directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, Carlin designed What a Girl Wants and New York Minute for Warner Bros. and director Dennie Gordon.

Carlin’s most recent production was The Last King of Scotland, directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Forest Whitaker.

TONY CRANSTOUN (Editor) has had a very successful career, winning him a number of awards. He has mostly worked on various television productions, some of which are documentaries. The documentaries include Sarah Manwaring-White’s Dispatches, Paul Watson’s Cutting Edge and Emma Sayce’s Real Crime.

Other work he has successfully completed includes Tom Vaughan’s Cold Feet; Frank W. Smith and Richard Signy’s Medics; Matthew Evans’ Band of Gold, series two; Jean Stewart, Charles McDougall and Richard Standeven’s Cracker; Menhaj Huda and Charles McDougall’s Queer as Folk; Nigel Douglas’ Stan the Man; and Steve Bendelack’s The League of Gentlemen, series three. Cranstoun has won an Editing ACE award for Christopher Menaul’s The Forsyte Saga and two RTS awards—for Adrian Shergold’s The Second Coming and Danielle Cable: Eyewitness. More recently, he has completed projects such as Island at War and Blue Murder. The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse was his first feature film.

PIERRE-YVES GAYRAUD (Costume Designer) is one of France’s most sought-after costume designers, with more than 30 films to his credit. Perhaps best known in the U.S. for two large-scale productions, Régis Wargnier’s Oscar®-winning Indochine and Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity. Indochine, set during the French occupation of Vietnam and filmed in that country, starred Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Perez and brought Gayraud and collaborator Gabriella Pescucci César Award nominations.

He recently designed the costumes for Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and two segments of the episodic Paris, je t’aime, with directors Tykwer and the Coen brothers.

Almost everyone knows at least one of HOWARD GOODALL’s (Music by) popular television themes for Blackadder, Mr. Bean, Red Dwarf, The Catherine Tate Show, QI and The Vicar of Dibley. Other television scores include The Borrowers and his BAFTA-nominated The Gathering Storm. In the theater, his musicals have been performed throughout the world. The Hired Man, which he wrote with Melvyn Bragg in 1984, won The Ivor Novello Award for Best Musical (1985); four Olivier Award nominations; a John Kraaijkamp Musical Award in Holland (2001); seven Waterford International Musical Festival awards; and the TMA Award for Best Musical in 2004.

He is a prodigious writer of choral music and has contributed songs to several platinum-selling CDs. “In Memoriam Anne Frank” was performed at the first National Holocaust Memorial concert in January 2001, and his settings of “Psalm 23” and “Love Divine” are amongst the most performed of all contemporary choral works.

As well as presenting the BBC’s Choir of the Year, Chorister of the Year and Young Musician of the Year, he has written and presented his own highly acclaimed music documentaries for Channel 4. Howard Goodall’s Organ Works won him an RTS Award in 1998, Howard Goodall’s Choir Works (1998) was nominated for Best Music Programme at the 1998 Montreux Festival. Howard Goodall’s Big Bangs won the prestigious BAFTA Huw Wheldon award in the U.K. and a Peabody Award (U.S.) for Journalism and Mass Communication in 2000. Howard Goodall’s Great Dates was BAFTA-nominated in 2002. His 2004 series for Channel 4, Howard Goodall’s 20th Century Greats, won an RTS Award for Education and was nominated for a BAFTA Award and an International Rose d’Or.

In 2006, Goodall was awarded a British Academy of Composers and Songwriters Gold Badge Award for exceptional work in support of his fellow British composers. In January 2007, he was appointed by the Secretary of State for Education as ambassador to lead a national campaign for singing. Goodall is the recipient of the 2007 Making Music/Sir Charles Groves Prize for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.