Creators

Richard Curtis was born in New Zealand in 1956 and raised in the Phillippines, Sweden and the UK. He has now lived in London off and on for over 20 years. He began writing comedy after leaving Oxford University in 1978. He had worked with Rowan Atkinson there-and continued to do so. His first job on television was writing for all four series of Not the Nine O'Clock News for the BBC. He then went on to write the Blackadder series, a situation comedy set in four different eras of British history, always starring Rowan Atkinson in a different amusing haircut. The last three series were co-written with Ben Elton.

During these years, Richard, Rowan and Ben staged two comedy revues in London's West End and Richard wrote his first film, The Tall Guy.

Back on television, Richard and Rowan then began work on Mr Bean, and continued for some years to make intermittent programmes starring the man in the tie who says very little. In December 1993, Richard was awarded the Writers Guild of Great Britain Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

His second film, Four Weddings and a Funeral won a French Cesar, an Australian Academy Award and the BAFTA for Best Film.

In 1994, Richard was made an MBE. The movie Bean, co-written with Robin Driscoll, directed by Mel Smith and starring Rowan Atkinson opened in Britain at the end of August 1997. It is about Mr Bean's visit to America and has more dialogue in it than you would expect.

His other films include Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually, Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, The Girl In The Cafe - a television drama and The Boat That Rocked.

Richard Curtis is co-founder and vice-chairman of Comic Relief, the organisation which runs Red Nose Day and Sport Relief in Britain. He began the charity after a trip to Ethiopia during the famine of 1985. Comic Relief has made over £500,000,000 for charity projects in Africa and the U.K. Richard was also a founding member of the Make Poverty History coalition.

He is not married to Emma Freud and they have a daughter, Scarlett, and three sons, Jake, Charlie and Spike. In 2000, he was made a CBE. In 2007 he was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship.