Donald William Robertson Boyd was born on 11 August 1948 and is a Scottish film director, producer, screenwriter and novelist.
15 Facts About Don Boyd
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Don Boyd was a Governor of the London Film School until 2016 and in 2017 was made an Honorary Professor in the College of Humanities at Exeter University.
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Don Boyd graduated in 1970 and began his career working for the BBC television series Tomorrow's World.
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In 1977 Don Boyd established his own production company, Don Boyd's Co.
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In 1978 Don Boyd collaborated on and helped finance Ron Peck's and Paul Hallam's 1978 Nighthawks, described by Time Out as "Britain's first committed gay feature film", which attracted controversy in the UK at the time prompting Channel 4 to delay its broadcast until 1984.
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Tucker, whose interest at least initially was as much as a patron of the arts as devising tax schemes, and Don Boyd were among the first in the UK to provide them to finance films.
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Don Boyd moved to Hollywood in the early 1980s for a two-year period, where he worked at both Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios and produced John Schlesinger's 1981 $24 million comedy Honky Tonk Freeway.
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Don Boyd returned to the UK in 1982 and attempted to resume his directorial career with Gossip, which was to be a satire on celebrity life in the early Thatcher years based on an original treatment by Frances Lynn.
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In 1987 Don Boyd produced the multi-directorial opera film Aria which featured segments by Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, Bill Bryden, Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Franc Roddam, Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple.
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Don Boyd directed for ITV television the biopic Goldeneye starring Charles Dance as Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond.
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Don Boyd has presented a series of In Conversation events at the CIR with prominent cultural figures such as Mike Leigh, Nicolas Roeg, and the Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, lectures at least three times annually and was instrumental in the University's academic relationship with the London Film School.
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In 2018 he initiated a series of Creative Dialogues at Exeter University with celebrated figures in the cultural arena - the first two, conducted by Don Boyd, were in depth conversations with the film star Charles Dance and the former editor of Vogue Alexandra Shulman.
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Between 2009 and 2015, Don Boyd has been personally responsible for the curation, production and presentation of this work funded by private investors and by the Arts Council of England.
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Don Boyd contributes to The Guardian newspaper, Time Out and The Observer where his personal opinions as an informed insider have been balanced publicly with his championship of indigenous British cinema.
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In 2010 Don Boyd published his first novel, Margot's Secrets, a psychological thriller set in Barcelona about a therapist forced to confront her own adulterous secret following a series of violent ritualistic murders involving her clients.