Frank Cottrell-Boyce was born on 23 September 1959 and is an English screenwriter, novelist and occasional actor, known for his children's fiction and for his collaborations with film director Michael Winterbottom.
24 Facts About Frank Cottrell-Boyce
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce has achieved fame as the writer for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony and for sequels to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, a children's classic by Ian Fleming.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce was born in 1959 in Bootle near Liverpool to a Catholic family.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce moved to Rainhill, while still at primary school.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce was greatly influenced by reading Moomins growing up.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce read English at Keble College, Oxford, where he went on to earn a doctorate.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce met Denise Cottrell, a fellow Keble undergraduate, and they married in Keble College chapel.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a patron of the Insight Film Festival, a biennial, interfaith festival held in Manchester, UK, to make positive contributions to understanding, respect and community cohesion.
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Aidan Frank Cottrell-Boyce, one of the couple's sons, is a writer.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce was a leading light in the Liverpool band "Dead Trout" in 1979.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce has been praised by Roger Ebert as one of the few truly inventive modern-day screenwriters.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce has spoken against the "three-act structure" and the "hero's journey" formulas, which are often regarded as axiomatic truths in the business.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising it as the year's best children's book published in the UK His next novel Framed, he made the shortlist for both the Carnegie and the Whitbread Children's Book Award.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce adapted it as a screenplay for a 2009 BBC television film.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce made the Carnegie shortlist again for Cosmic.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote and staged his first original theatre production Proper Clever at the Liverpool Playhouse during the city's European Capital of Culture Year, in 2008.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce was the writer of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, whose storyline he based on Shakespeare's The Tempest.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce collaborated with director Danny Boyle and other members of the creative team, including designer Mark Tildesley, in the development of the story and themes, and wrote "short documents that told the story of each segment" to provide context for choreographers, builders and other participants.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote the brochure, the stadium announcements and the media guide for presenter Huw Edwards.
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Three months later, Frank Cottrell-Boyce won the 2012 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Unforgotten Coat.
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce was made an Honorary Doctor of Literature at Edge Hill University on 16 July 2013.
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In 2014, Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote an episode of Doctor Who, titled "In the Forest of the Night".
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote the second episode of the tenth series, "Smile".
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Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an advocate for reading aloud and patron of The Reader Organisation.