39 Facts About Richard Curtis

1.

Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis was born on 8 November 1956 and is a British screenwriter, producer and film director.

2.

Richard Curtis is known for the drama War Horse and for having co-written the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley.

3.

In 2007, Curtis received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

4.

Richard Curtis was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest figures in British comedy in 2003.

5.

Richard Curtis is the son of Glyness S and Anthony J Curtis.

6.

Richard Curtis's father was a Czechoslovakian refugee who moved to Australia when aged thirteen and became an executive at Unilever.

7.

Richard Curtis attended Papplewick School in Ascot, Berkshire.

8.

Richard Curtis achieved a first-class Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford.

9.

Richard Curtis appeared in the company's "After Eights" at the Oxford Playhouse in May 1976.

10.

Richard Curtis then began to write comedy for film and TV.

11.

Richard Curtis was a regular writer on the BBC comedy series Not the Nine O'Clock News, where he wrote many of the show's songs with Howard Goodall and many satirical sketches, often with Rowan Atkinson.

12.

Richard Curtis co-wrote with Philip Pope the Hee Bee Gee Bees' single "Meaningless Songs " released in 1980 to parody the style of a series of Bee Gees' disco hits.

13.

In 1984 and 1985, Richard Curtis wrote material for ITV's satirical puppet show Spitting Image.

14.

Atkinson played the lead throughout, but Richard Curtis was the only writer who participated in every episode of Blackadder.

15.

Richard Curtis's first was The Tall Guy, a romantic comedy starring Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson and produced by Working Title films.

16.

In 1994, Richard Curtis created and co-wrote The Vicar of Dibley for comedian Dawn French, which was a great success.

17.

Richard Curtis achieved his breakthrough success with the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral.

18.

Richard Curtis chose Mike Newell to direct the film after watching his TV film Ready When You Are, Mr McGill.

19.

Richard Curtis continued his association with Working Title writing the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, which broke the record set by Four Weddings and a Funeral to become the top-grossing British film.

20.

Richard Curtis next co-wrote the screen adaptation of the international bestseller Bridget Jones's Diary for Working Title.

21.

Two years later, Richard Curtis re-teamed with Working Title to write and direct Love Actually.

22.

Richard Curtis has said in interviews that the sprawling, multi-character structure of Love Actually owes a debt to his favourite film, Robert Altman's Nashville.

23.

Richard Curtis followed this in 2004 with work as co-writer on Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary.

24.

Richard Curtis then wrote the screenplay to The Girl in the Cafe, a television film directed by David Yates and produced by the BBC and HBO as part of the Make Poverty History campaign's Live 8 efforts in 2005.

25.

Richard Curtis next co-wrote with Anthony Minghella an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel, The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which Minghella shot in mid-2007 in Botswana.

26.

The film did not run in the US until early 2009, when HBO aired it as the pilot of a resulting six-episode TV series with the same cast, on which Richard Curtis served as executive producer.

27.

Richard Curtis re-edited the film for its US release where it was re-titled Pirate Radio, but failed to find an audience.

28.

Richard Curtis followed that with War Horse, which he rewrote for director Steven Spielberg based on an earlier script by playwright Lee Hall.

29.

Richard Curtis was recommended to Spielberg by DreamWorks Studio executive Stacey Snider, who had worked with Richard Curtis during her time at Universal Studios.

30.

Richard Curtis followed that with Trash, which he adapted from the novel by Andy Mulligan for director Stephen Daldry.

31.

Richard Curtis next wrote Roald Dahl's Esio Trot, a BBC television film adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic children's novel.

32.

Richard Curtis organised the Live 8 concerts with Bob Geldof to publicise poverty, particularly in Africa, and pressure G8 leaders to adopt his proposals for ending it.

33.

Richard Curtis has written of his work in The Observer in the Global development section in 2005.

34.

Richard Curtis helped spearhead the launch of the Robin Hood tax campaign in 2010.

35.

Richard Curtis talked the producer of American Idol into doing a show wherein celebrities journeyed into Africa and experienced the level of poverty for themselves.

36.

In October 2010, a short film created by Richard Curtis titled No Pressure was released by the 10:10 campaign in Britain to promote climate change politics.

37.

In March 2011, Richard Curtis apologised following a complaint by the British Stammering Association about 2011 Comic Relief's opening skit, a parody by Lenny Henry of the 2010 film The King's Speech.

38.

Richard Curtis previously dated Anne Strutt, now Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, before her marriage to Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Member of Parliament.

39.

Richard Curtis has named characters in his writing Bernard.