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Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born January 6, 1955 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England) is an English comedian, actor and writer best known for playing the title role in the British television comedy Mr. Bean and for his role as Edmund Blackadder in Blackadder.

In 1980, he won the Variety Club Award for BBC Personality of the Year.

Early life

Atkinson was born to Ella May and Eric Atkinson, Anglican farmers in the town of Consett, north-west of the city of Durham. He was educated at Durham Choristers School, followed by St Bees School, and studied electrical engineering at Newcastle University. He continued with an MSc at Oxford (Queen's College), starting his comedy career at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1977. At Oxford, he also acted and performed early sketches for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) and the Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), meeting writer Richard Curtis and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.

Career

After university, Atkinson toured with Angus Deayton as his straight man. The show was filmed for television, and its success allowed him to develop a successful stand-up, writing and radio career.

In 1978 he was offered his own television series by ITV but turned it down in favour of Not the Nine O'Clock News, produced by his friend John Lloyd, in which he starred with Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. Atkinson was one of the show's main sketch writers.

The success of Not the Nine O'Clock News led to his starring in the medieval sitcom The Black Adder, which he also co-wrote with Richard Curtis, in 1983. Despite a mixed reception, a second series was written, this time by Curtis and Ben Elton, and first screened in 1985. Blackadder II followed the fortunes of one of the descendants of Atkinson's original character, this time in the Elizabethan era. The same pattern was repeated in two sequels Blackadder the Third (1987) (set in the Regency era), and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), set in the First World War. The Blackadder series went on to become one of the most successful BBC situation comedies of the 1980s.

Atkinson's other famous creation, the hapless Mr. Bean, first appeared the following year in a half-hour special for Thames Television. Several sequels followed at irregular intervals, before the character transferred to film in 1997. Entitled Bean, it was directed by Mel Smith, his former co-star from Not the Nine O'Clock News. It supposedly made Atkinson £11 million in fees as writer and actor, and allowed him to buy a McLaren F1 car. As of 2006, a second film is in production, which Atkinson says will be the last time he plays the character.

Atkinson has made appearances at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, which also airs on television. He was present at the fifth festival in 1987 and the seventh in 1989.

In 2003, Atkinson was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy [1], and in a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

In June 2005, Atkinson led a coalition of the UK's most prominent actors and writers, including Nicholas Hytner and Ian McEwan, to the British Parliament in an attempt to force a review of the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill — on the grounds that the Bill would give religious groups a "weapon of disproportionate power" whose threat would engender a culture of self-censorship among artists.

Advertising

A regular to appear in television advertising, he has fronted campaigns for Hitachi electrical goods, Fujifilm, and Give Blood. Most famously, he appeared as a hapless and error-prone espionage agent in a long-running series for Barclaycard, on which character his title role in Johnny English was based.

Comedic style

Atkinson was a stutterer as a child, a condition which sometimes returns when he is in stressful situations. In particular, the letter "B" posed a problem for him. He managed to overcome this through over-articulation; however, this — somewhat ironically — evolved into one of his trademark comic devices (his pronunciation of "Bob" in Blackadder being a famous example). His other trademark is his Received Pronunciation (RP) British accent.

Atkinson's comedy style, which is rigorously planned and scripted — partly to ensure his stress and stutter is minimised — is often visually-based. It results in comedy as performance — like Charlie Chaplin — rather than as observation or discussion, as many of the routines of the time were. Atkinson's talent for visual comedy has seen him described as "the man with the rubber face".

Private life

Atkinson married Sunetra Sastry in 1990 in a quiet ceremony in the Russian Tea Room in New York City; Stephen Fry was best man. The couple live in a manor house in Oxfordshire, and have two children, Lily and Benjamin.

Cars

A millionaire with an estimated wealth of £60 million, his major hobby is fast cars. His mother owned a Morris Minor, which he drove around the family farm, as well as tractors. He has written for the British magazines Car and Evo, and also holds a UK HGV licence, gained because of his fascination of trucks and to ensure employment as a young actor.

A lover of and participant in car racing, he appeared in the straight role of racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle in 1995. While in 1991, he starred in the self-penned "Driven Man", a series of sketches featuring Atkinson driving around London trying to solve his car-fetish, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists. [2]

His large car collection includes: [3]

• Aston Martin V8 - Used in the film The Tall Guy, with Atkinson's registration plate COM1C. The character Dexter is pulled over by the police for speeding just as Atkinson was in real life in the very same car. Atkinson received a driving ban as a result of the incident [4]
• Aston Martin V8 Zagato - which he races, and from which he escaped unhurt after crashing it into a barrier at an Aston Martin owners’ club event in Yorkshire in 2001
• Audi A8
• Mercedes-Benz 500E - a black taxi with over 320hp.
• Bentley Mulsanne
• Lotus Carlton - a car with 2 turbos and nearly 400hp.
• Lancia Delta Integrale
• McLaren F1 - a purple one and his second — he wrote the first off in a car crash which left an Austin Metro virtually undamaged[5]
• MG XPower SV
• Renault 5 Turbo - he raced one for a couple of seasons

One car he will not own is a Porsche: "I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people — and I wish them no ill — are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one."

Selected television appearances

• The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979), a charity special for Amnesty International
• Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979–1982)
• Blackadder (1983-1989)
• Mr. Bean (1990–1995, 2002)
• Bernard and the Genie (1991)
• Funny Business (1992), a documentary about the craft of comedy
• The Thin Blue Line (1995–1996)
• The Comic Relief Red Nose Day telecasts, including appearing in:
  • Spider-Plant Man as Peter Piper and Spider-Plant Man (2005)
  • Lying With Michael Jackson as Martin Bashir (2003)
  • Popsters as Nasty Neville (2001)
  • "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death" as The Doctor (1999)
  • Torvill and Bean as Mr Bean (1995)
  • Blind Date with Mr Bean as Mr Bean (1993)
  • (I Wanna Be) Elected as Mr Bean (1992)
  • Mr Bean's Red Nose Day as Mr Bean (1991)
  • Blackadder - The Cavalier Years as Edmund Blackadder (1988)

Filmography

Discography

Albums

• Rowan Atkinson Live in Belfast (1982, re-released 1996)
• Not Just a Pretty Face (1987, re-released 1994)

Compilations

• The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)
• Not The Nine O'Clock News – The Album (1980)
• We Are Most Amused: The Best of British Comedy (1981)

External links

• Rowan Atkinson biography at BFI Screenonline
• Fan site — biography, roles
• RowanAtkinson.com: Forum
• Interview in the Scotsman newspaper
• Interview in The Daily Show (video)
• Interview for McLaren Group re his love for cars

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