39 Facts About Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter, author and podcaster.

Mark Kermode is the co-author of Hollywood: Sixty Great Years, The Movie Doctors, and Mark Kermode's Surround Sound.

Mark Kermode is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and a founding member of the skiffle band the Dodge Brothers, for which he plays double bass.

Mark Kermode was born in the Royal Free Hospital in the London Borough of Camden.

Mark Kermode was educated at the state-funded Church of England primary school St Mary's at Finchley, and was granted a Barnet-council-funded free place at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, Hertfordshire under the Direct grant grammar school scheme in 1974, at the same time as actor Jason Isaacs.

Mark Kermode's mother was a GP, who was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, and practised in Golders Green, north London.

Mark Kermode was raised as a Methodist, and later became a member of the Church of England.

Mark Kermode's parents divorced when he was in his early twenties, and he subsequently changed his surname to his Manx mother's maiden name by deed poll.

Mark Kermode earned his PhD in English at the University of Manchester in 1991, writing a thesis on horror fiction.

Mark Kermode began his film career as a print journalist, writing for Manchester's City Life, and then Time Out and NME in London.

Mark Kermode began working as a film broadcaster on LBC in 1988, after which he moved to BBC Radio 5.

Mark Kermode became the film critic for BBC Radio 1 in 1993, on a regular Thursday night slot called Cult Film Corner on Mark Radcliffe's Graveyard Shift session.

Mark Kermode hosted a movie review show with Mary Anne Hobbs on Radio 1 on Tuesday nights called ClingFilm.

From 2001 until 2022, Mark Kermode reviewed and debated new film releases with Mayo on the BBC Radio 5 Live show Mark Kermode and Mayo's Film Review.

From 2001 to 2005, Mark Kermode reviewed films each week for the New Statesman.

Mark Kermode writes for the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine.

From 1995 to 2001, Mark Kermode was a film critic and presenter for Film4 and Channel 4, presenting the weekly Extreme Cinema strand.

Mark Kermode has written and presented documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC, and until 2023 appeared on The Film Review for BBC News at Five.

For BBC Two's The Culture Show, Mark Kermode hosted an annual "Mark Kermode Awards" episode, which presented statuettes to actors and directors not nominated for Academy Awards that year.

In 2002, Mark Kermode challenged the British Board of Film Classification, the censor for film in the UK, about its cuts to the 1972 film The Last House on the Left.

Mark Kermode has since stated that the BBFC do a good job in an impossible situation and expressed his approval of their decisions.

From September 2013 to September 2023, Mark Kermode was the chief film critic for The Observer.

Between 2019 and 2024, Mark Kermode presented a soundtrack-themed show on classical radio station Scala Radio.

Mark Kermode produces an annual "best-of-the-year" and "worst-of-the-year" movie lists, thereby providing an overview of his critical preferences.

Mark Kermode was a regular presenter on BBC Two's The Culture Show and appeared regularly on Newsnight Review.

Mark Kermode co-hosted an early 1990s afternoon magazine show on BBC Radio 5 called A Game of Two Halves, alongside former Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating.

Mark Kermode appeared in a cameo role as himself in the revival of the BBC's Absolutely Fabulous on 1 January 2012.

Mark Kermode retired the podcast for its tenth anniversary at the close of 2018, with special episodes on his most and least favourite movies of the previous decade.

Mark Kermode appears in the DVD extras of Lost in La Mancha, interviewing Terry Gilliam, and Pan's Labyrinth, in which he interviews Guillermo del Toro about the film, which he has called a masterpiece.

Mark Kermode has written books, published by the BFI in its Modern Classics series, on The Exorcist, Silent Running and The Shawshank Redemption and his documentary for Channel 4, Shawshank: The Redeeming Feature, is on the film's tenth anniversary special edition DVD.

Mark Kermode has been involved with the annual Isle of Man Film Festival.

Mark Kermode became patron of the Sir John Hurt Film Trust in November 2019.

Mark Kermode is a visiting fellow at the University of Southampton.

Mark Kermode is married to Linda Ruth Williams, a professor who lectures on film at the University of Exeter.

Mark Kermode has been described as "a feminist, a near vegetarian, a churchgoer and a straight-arrow spouse who just happens to enjoy seeing people's heads explode across a cinema screen".

Mark Kermode is a patron of the charitable trust of the Phoenix Cinema in North London, which was his favourite cinema during his childhood in East Finchley.

In 2013, Mark Kermode was appointed an Island of Culture Patron by the Isle of Man Arts Council.

In 2016, Mark Kermode was made an honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Winchester.

In 2018, Mark Kermode was appointed Honorary Professor in the Film Studies Department at the University of Exeter.