David Yates was born on 8 October 1963 and is an English film director, producer and screenwriter, who has directed feature films, short films, and television productions.
35 Facts About David Yates
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David Yates is best known for directing the final four films in the Harry Potter series and the three films of its prequel series, Fantastic Beasts.
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David Yates has had a close partnership with Warner Bros.
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David Yates was born on 8 October 1963 in St Helens, Lancashire, England.
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David Yates used this to shoot various films in which his friends and family featured.
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David Yates attended Grange Park High School, St Helens College and then the University of Essex.
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David Yates said that he "used to skive off college all the time" and never expected to join university before being surprised by his A-Level exam results.
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David Yates graduated with a BA in Government in 1987.
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In 1988, David Yates made his first film When I Was a Girl in Swindon.
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David Yates made his fourth short film, Good Looks, which was presented at the Chicago International Film Festival.
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From 1994 to 1995, David Yates directed several episodes of the ITV police procedural The Bill before directing and producing three episodes of the television documentary Tale of Three Seaside Towns alongside producer Alistair Clarke.
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David Yates directed his fifth short film Punch before making his feature film debut in 1998 with the release of the independent historical-drama film The Tichborne Claimant.
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David Yates returned to television in 2000 to direct the episodes of Greed, Envy and Lust for the BBC miniseries The Sins, starring Pete Postlethwaite, as well as The Way We Live Now, the four-part television adaptation of the novel of the same name by Anthony Trollope.
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David Yates shared the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial with screenwriter Andrew Davies and producer Nigel Stafford-Clark at the 2002 BAFTA Awards.
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One year later, David Yates attended the 56th BAFTA Awards with a British Academy Film Award nomination for Best Short Film for the fourteen-minute production, Rank, which expressed the social elements of racism, friendship and adolescence through the story of a street gang that cross Glasgow to witness the arrival of a group of Somali refugees.
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David Yates collected the TV Spielfilm Award at the Cologne Conference in Germany and won the Directors Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.
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David Yates directed the television adaptation of nine-year-old Daisy Ashford's novel The Young Visiters, starring Jim Broadbent alongside Hugh Laurie.
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Day commented on his collaboration with David Yates saying that "we are very good friends because we have spent so much time together".
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Also in 2004, David Yates was involved in plans for a film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited for Warner Independent Pictures.
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David Yates was set to work with Paul Bettany, Jude Law and Jennifer Connelly on the project, but pulled out in the later stages due to constant budget issues affecting the film's production.
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David Yates then directed Richard Curtis' script to The Girl in the Cafe, a television film starring Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald.
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David Yates was then shortly after confirmed to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by Warner Bros.
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David Yates has made films in the UK about politics without being heavy handed.
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The first scene that David Yates shot featured a giant interacting with human characters.
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The scene was the very first high-scale visual effects piece David Yates filmed in his career.
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David Yates won the title of Best Director at the Empire Awards and collected the People's Choice Award from the European Film Academy.
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However, the film was criticised by fans of the series for having the shortest running time out of the five released instalments; David Yates said that the original director's cut was "probably over three hours", resulting in much footage being cut, condensed and edited to fit within the studio's preferred time frame.
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David Yates worked alongside French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel on, what David Yates called, extensively colour grading the "incredibly rich" picture by making it look "very European" and drawing influences from the Dutch painter Rembrandt.
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David Yates controversially said that he was working with BBC Worldwide on plans to develop a Doctor Who film, although this was denied by the showrunner, Steven Moffat, in July 2012.
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David Yates directed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a 2016 film which is the first in a series of five instalments based on JK Rowling's book, set in the world of her Harry Potter novels.
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David Yates directed the 2018 sequel, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald which received mixed critical reception but emerged a box office success having grossed $654 million.
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David Yates returned to direct the third film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022 which received mixed critical reception and grossed $407 million worldwide, making it a box office disappointment and the lowest-grossing film in the Wizarding World franchise.
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David Yates next directed the drama film Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt, for Netflix.
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David Yates is the uncle of professional footballer Theo Walcott.
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Only certain awards for David Yates's direction are shown in this section.