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About the Filmmakers
Her first major Hollywood picture, Used People (1992), starred Shirley MacLaine and Marcello Mastroianni and garnered both Golden Globe nominations. This was followed by the controversial Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and Their Johns. In 1993 she directed Great Moments in Aviation, starring Vanessa Redgrave, John Hurt and Jonathan Pryce, followed by To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, starring Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo; both Swayze and Leguizamo were nominated for Golden Globe Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy/Musical. Earlier feature film credits include Swept From the Sea, starring Vincent Perez, Sir Ian McKellen and Rachel Weisz, and Vroom, starring Diana Quick, David Thewlis and Clive Owen. Additional television credits include Murder (with Julie Walters), Cinderella (with Kathleen Turner), Itch, Carry Greenham Home, Love at First Sight and Eve Arnold, A Portrait. Before becoming a filmmaker Kidron worked as a waitress, dancing girl, courier, gallery and shop worker. She has been taking photographs since the age of 11 and was "discovered" at age 13 by Magnum photographer Eve Arnold. Co-chaired by Tim Bevan (Producer) and Eric Fellner (Producer) since its establishment in 1982, Working Title Films is Europe's leading film production company. The company has produced more than 70 films with a combined worldwide gross in excess of two-and-a-half billion dollars and won four Academy Awards®, 20 British Academy Awards and numerous prizes at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals. This year, the company was awarded the prestigious Michael Balcon BAFTA Award for its outstanding contribution to the British Film Industry.Working Title Films' credits include the hugely successful romantic comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually, all starring Hugh Grant and written by Richard Curtis. Curtis also made his directorial debut with Love Actually.The company also has a long association with the Coen brothers, having made five films together, including the Academy Award®-winning Fargo; The Hudsucker Proxy; The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Are Thou?; and The Man Who Wasn't There, which won Joel Coen the Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.Noted for its discerning eye and for intelligent and entertaining narratives, Working Title is also known for searching out and adapting successful and original books. Stephen Frears brought Nick Hornby's High Fidelity to the screen and Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz did the same with Hornby's About a Boy. Other notable adaptations include the original Bridget Jones's Diary from Helen Fielding's bestseller; John Madden's adaptation of Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin, starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz; Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, from the book by Helen Prejean, which starred Oscar® winners Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn; and the children's classic The Borrowers, directed by Peter Hewitt and based on the books of Mary Norton.The company's credits also include Elizabeth, Bean, 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Guru, Johnny English, Ned Kelly, The Shape of Things and Thunderbirds, the live-action adventure film based on the television series of the 1960s. Working Title most recently saw the release of Wimbledon, directed by Richard Loncraine and starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany.Forthcoming productions include the suspenseful thriller The Interpreter, directed by Academy Award® winner Sydney Pollack starring Oscar® winners Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn; Nanny McPhee, directed by Kirk Jones, written by Oscar® winner Emma Thompson and starring Thompson, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury; the adventure drama Everest, directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot); and Pride and Prejudice, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen heading an ensemble cast that also includes Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Tom Hollander, Penelope Wilton and Dame Judi Dench.In 1999, WT2 was formed to produce Working Title's lower budget films. Its first film, Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry, became an international commercial and critical hit. The division, headed by Natascha Wharton, has since made Ali G Indahouse, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, as well as Long Time Dead and My Little Eye. This year, the division's releases include The Calcium Kid, starring Orlando Bloom; Shaun of the Dead, a romantic zombie comedy directed by Edgar Wright starring Simon Pegg; Mickybo & Me, directed by Terry Loane and starring Julie Walters, Ciaran Hinds, Adrian Dunbar and Gina McKee; and Inside I'm Dancing, directed by Damien O'Donnell and starring Romola Garai, James McAvoy and Steven Robertson.Jonathan Cavendish (Producer) is joint managing director of Little Bird and has served as producer on many feature films including the original Bridget Jones's Diary, as well as Gangster No. 1, directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Malcolm McDowell and Paul Bettany; Ordinary Decent Criminal, starring Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Mullan and directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan; Croupier, starring Clive Owen and directed by Mike Hodges; Nothing Personal, directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan and starring James Frain and Ian Hart; Into the West, directed by Mike Newell and starring Ellen Barkin and Gabriel Byrne, which won Best European Film at six international film festivals; and December Bride, directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan and starring Donal McCann and Saskia Reeves, which won 17 international awards including the Special Jury Prize at the European Film Awards.His most recent films include Marc Evan's psychological chiller Trauma, starring Colin Firth and Mena Suvari; Churchill: The Hollywood Years, written and directed by Peter Richardson; and The Key, a drama for the BBC directed by David Blair and written by Donna Franceschild.Cavendish has also produced or executive-produced several features and series for television, which include most recently The Many Lives of Albert Walker (2002), a drama based on extraordinary real events starring John Gordon Sinclair; Dirty Tricks (2000) for Carlton Television, starring Martin Clunes; All For Love (1998), a television film directed by Harry Hook and starring Anna Friel, Miranda Richardson and Richard E. Grant; The Writing on the Wall (1996), a television series starring Dennis Haysbert and William H. Macy; The Hanging Gale (1994), a television series starring the McGann Brothers and Michael Kitchen, which was nominated for four BAFTA awards including Best Serial; and In the Border Country, a television film starring Juliet Stevenson and Sean Bean, which won the Best Film Award at the Chicago Film Festival and Best Film at the BANFF TV Festival.Andrew Davies (Screenplay by), a BAFTA and Emmy Award winner, has been writing professionally since 1960. He began his career by writing radio plays and then moved into writing for television, films, theatre, novels and children's books. He is perhaps best known for his acclaimed screenplay of Pride and Prejudice for the BBC in 1995, with the adaptation receiving both the highest viewing figures of any BBC Classic Serial and the highest audience for any drama shown on the Arts & Entertainment Channel in the U.S. His feature film credits include Bridget Jones's Diary in 2001, a collaboration with Helen Fielding and Richard Curtis; the film of his novel, B Monkey, published in 1992, which was directed by Michael Radford; and his screenplay of Maeve Binchy's novel Circle of Friends, starring Chris O'Donnell and Minnie Driver. He is currently writing a feature film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, to be directed by David Yates and starring Jude Law. Recent television adaptations include the 2004 mini-series based on Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right; the recent PBS mini-series of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago; Daniel Deronda, based on George Elliot's novel; a contemporary version of Othello; 2002's Tipping the Velvet, from the Sarah Waters novel; Take a Girl Like You, a dramatization of the classic Kingsley Amis novel (2001); The Taylor of Panama, based on John Le Carre's screenplay (2001); Moll Flanders, starring Alex Kingston (1999); Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, also in 1999; A Rather English Marriage, based on the novel by Angela Lambert, which was selected for the 1998 London Film Festival and screened by the BBC in December of the same year; Vanity Fair and Getting Hurt from his own novel, both in ‘98; Emma in ‘97; and Wilderness in ‘96. Other television work includes the highly acclaimed dramatization for the BBC of George Elliot's Middlemarch in ‘94, which received rave reviews in both the U.K. and the U.S. Davies gained much attention for his widely praised trilogy House of Cards, To Play the King and The Final Cut. He also co-wrote the popular British sitcom Game On. Davies' stage play Prin enjoyed a very successful run at London's Lyric Theatre in 1989 and was also produced in New York, Australia and in rep. His earlier play, Rose, starring Glenda Jackson, played to full houses in London's West End and was subsequently produced on Broadway and in many other countries. Helen Fielding (Novel by / Screenplay by) was executive producer and co-writer on the first Bridget Jones movie and is the author of the novels Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which together have sold over 15 million copies.Fielding worked in television at the BBC for many years and drew on her experiences on live news programs for many of Bridget Jones's escapades. In the late 1980s, she produced documentaries in Ethiopia, Sudan and Mozambique for Comic Relief. Her first novel, Cause Celeb, published in 1994, set in a refugee camp in Africa and her latest novel, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, which has been hitting worldwide bestseller lists over the last year, also draw on her experiences as a journalist overseas. After leaving the BBC, she wrote for the Sunday Times, Telegraph and the Independent, where Bridget Jones began her life as a weekly column. Richard Curtis (Screenplay by) was born in New Zealand in 1956 and raised in Manila, Stockholm, Folkestone and Warrington. 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 cowritten with Ben Elton.During these years, Richard, Rowan and Ben staged two West End comedy revues and Richard wrote his first film, The Tall Guy, directed by Mel Smith and starring Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson (in her film debut) and Rowan Atkinson as a cruel heartless comedian starring in a West End show. The film was not autobiographical and was produced by Working Title with whom Richard always has worked since.Back on television, Richard and Rowan then began work on Mr. Bean, and continued for some years to make intermittent programs starring the man in the tie who says very little. In 1993, Richard wrote Bernard and the Genie, a wholesome Christmas fantasy starring Lenny Henry and Alan Cumming. In December 1993, Richard was awarded the Writers Guild of Great Britain Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award.His second film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, was directed by Mike Newell, produced by Duncan Kenworthy and released in March 1994. The film won a French Cesar, an Australian Academy Award and the BAFTA for Best Film. At the Academy Awards®, the film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film.In 1994, Richard was made an MBE and started writing The Vicar of Dibley, a situation comedy for the BBC, starring Dawn French as a female vicar in a small village suspiciously full of eccentric characters. 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 next film, Notting Hill, starred Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant and was released in May 1999 – and for a while was the highest earning British film ever. In 2001, Richard was co-writer of the award-winning screenplay Bridget Jones's Diary, starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and a nasty Hugh Grant.He recently wrote and directed Love Actually, a story about lots of different kinds of love, set at Christmas and featuring 22 leading characters.Richard Curtis is co-founder and vice-chairman of Comic Relief, the organization which runs Red Nose Day in Britain. He has co-produced the live nights of Comic Relief for the BBC since 1987. Comic Relief has made over £325,000,000 for charity projects in Africa and the U.K. He is now working on the Make Poverty History 2005 campaign, concentrating on Trade Justice, more Aid, and Debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries. In 2000, he was made a CBE.Adam Brooks (Screenplay by) most recently co-wrote the Working Title release Wimbledon, directed by Richard Loncraine and starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany.Previous to that, he assumed both screenwriting and directing duties on the critically received The Invisible Circus, based on the novel by Jennifer Egan and starring Cameron Diaz. Brooks wrote the hit comedy French Kiss, starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, and also co-wrote (with Richard LaGravenese and Akosua Busia) the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison's Beloved, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton. He has collaborated with director/actor Griffin Dunne on several projects: Brooks adapted the novel (along with Robin Swicord and Akiva Goldsman) for Dunne's Practical Magic; the pair co-wrote the Academy Award®-nominated short film Duke of Groove, which Dunne directed; and Brooks directed and penned the story for the Sundance Film Festival jury prize winner Almost You, which starred Dunne and Brooke Adams. Debra Hayward (Executive Producer) serves as Head of Film for Working Title Films and is creatively responsible for the company's entire slate of motion pictures in conjunction with her U.S. counterpart, Liza Chasin.Hayward joined Working Title in 1989 as a producer's assistant on such films as Fools of Fortune and Dakota Road and then moved to the development department, where she worked on such diverse films as 1991's London Kills Me and 1993's Map of the Human Heart.Hayward most recently served as executive producer on the romantic comedy Wimbledon (starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany) and serves in the same capacity on the upcoming Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightly heading an impressive ensemble cast).She also serves as co-producer on the soon-to-be-released suspenseful thriller The Interpreter, starring Academy Award® winners Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn and directed by Oscar® winner Syndey Pollack. Her most recent additional co-producer credits include Ned Kelly, starring Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom; Richard Curtis' worldwide hit Love Actually; the international hit Johnny English, starring Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia and John Malkovich; and the award-winning About a Boy. She also recently executive-produced The Guru and 40 Days and 40 Nights.Hayward's additional co-producing credits include the worldwide smash Bridget Jones's Diary, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the lauded Elizabeth, The Matchmaker and The Borrowers. As a development executive, she was instrumental in helping to bring such films as Notting Hill, Plunkett & Macleane, French Kiss, Moonlight and Valentino, Panther, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Posse to the screen. She also served as associate producer on Loch Ness.Liza Chasin (Executive Producer) has served as President of U.S. Production at Working Title Films since 1996. In addition to Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Chasin serves as producer on the recent release Wimbledon (starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany) and on the upcoming Pride and Prejudice (starring Keira Knightley and an ensemble cast).Chasin is also co-producing The Interpreter, starring Academy Award® winners Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn and directed by Oscar® winner Sydney Pollack. Chasin also served as executive producer on the highly acclaimed Thirteen, which won the best director slot at the Sundance Film Festival for Catherine Hardwicke and stars Holly Hunter (in an Oscar®-nominated performance) and Evan Rachel Wood. She also recently coproduced Richard Curtis' worldwide hit, the ensemble romantic comedy Love Actually, and executive-produced the family adventure Thunderbirds. Over the past several years, Chasin has been involved in the development and production of such acclaimed films as Dead Man Walking, Fargo, Notting Hill and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Chasin also served as co-producer of About a Boy, directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, starring Hugh Grant, Toni Colette and Rachel Weisz; Bridget Jones's Diary, starring Renée Zellweger; and High Fidelity, starring John Cusack. She also co-produced the Academy Award® and Golden Globe nominated critical success, Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett. A graduate of N.Y.U. Film School, Chasin first joined the company in 1991 as Director of Development. She was subsequently promoted to Vice President of Production and Development, becoming the head of the Los Angeles office for Working Title, overseeing the company's creative affairs in the U.S. Prior to joining Working Title Films, Chasin worked for several years in various production capacities in New York-based production companies. Adrian Biddle, B.S.C. (Director of Photography) won a number of prestigious awards in the field of television commercials before making his feature film debut as director of photography on James Cameron's Aliens. He then went on to light such films as The Princess Bride and Willow before working with director Ridley Scott on his acclaimed Thelma and Louise, for which Biddle received an Academy Award® nomination, as well as BAFTA and British Society of Cinematographers nominations. He received a further British Society of Cinematographers nomination for Scott's 1492 Conquest of Paradise.Most recently, Biddle photographed Peter Howitt's Laws of Attraction with Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore. His list of credits also includes David Dobkin's Shanghai Knights, Rob Bowman's Reign of Fire, Stephen Sommers' The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Kevin Lima's 102 Dalmatians, Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water, Michael Apted's The World Is Not Enough, Paul Henderson's Event Horizon, Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy (for which he won the European Cinematographer Year Award), Stephen Herek's 101 Dalmatians, Robert Young's Fierce Creatures, Danny Cannon's Judge Dredd, Paul Weiland's City Slickers II, Mel Smith's The Tall Guy and Rob Knight's The Dawning.Greg Hayden (Editor) has edited such films as Danny DeVito's Duplex (shared credit), Ben Stiller's Zoolander and Jay Roach's Austin Powers in Goldmember (shared credit). His additional credits as an additional editor or co-editor include Meet the Parents; Mystery, Alaska; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; Krippendorf's Tribe; The Beautician and the Beast; Dunston Checks In; Cabin Boy; Forever Young and Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. Gemma Jackson (Production Designer) returns to Bridget Jones after having previously designed her world for Bridget Jones's Diary. Jackson has also had a collaborative relationship with David Mamet, with whom she has worked on three films: the recent Spartan, State and Maine and The Winslow Boy. Her feature film work also includes the acclaimed Iris, Killing Me Softly and most recently Finding Neverland, set in "Peter Pan" creator J.M. Barrie's England.Born in England, Jackson graduated from St. Martin's School of Art before completing a post-graduate course in theater design. Among her other credits as production designer are John Sayles' Limbo, Peter Hewitt's The Borrowers and Tom Sawyer, Mikael Salomon's A Far Off Place and Neil Jordan's The Miracle and Mona Lisa. As a child, Harry Gregson-Williams (Music by) toured extensively in Europe with an ensemble from the music school of St. John's College, Cambridge, and by age 13 had appeared as a soloist on over a dozen records. He went on to earn musical scholarships throughout his education, culminating in a coveted spot at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After his formal education, Gregson-Williams taught music to young children, guiding many of his students to musical careers. He spent a year in Egypt working for the government, teaching disadvantaged children in Alexandria and Cairo, and six months in an inspirational program with similar aims in the Rift Valley in Kenya. It was during this time that his ear became sensitive to the rhythms and sounds of African music (which find their way into his work today). Moving to London, he sought out Stanley Myers, who recognized a kindred spirit in Gregson-Williams. As an orchestrator, arranger, and writer on many of Myers' subsequent films, he rapidly learned the techniques of film scoring and formed relationships with other top composers including Hans Zimmer, who had also previously been a protégé of Myers. It was a natural progression for Gregson-Williams to work with Zimmer on several projects that Zimmer scored and recorded in the U.K., such as The Lion King, Crimson Tide, Beyond Rangoon, K2 and Two Deaths. It was through his association with Stanley Myers that Gregson-Williams also became friends with legendary filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, composing his first major scores for Roeg's Full Body Massage (starring Brian Brown and Mimi Rogers) and Hotel Paradise (starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Theresa Russell). In 1995 Gregson-Williams moved to Los Angeles and quickly launched his career as a Hollywood composer by composing the score for Billie August's Smilla's Sense of Snow. Gregson-Williams next took on The Whole Wide World, a period romance starring Renée Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio and in 1996, he composed music for The Rock, forming a relationship with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, which has continued to this day. The following year found Gregson-Williams busy with a total of eight feature film projects, starting with Deceiver, a thriller directed by the Pate brothers; and The Replacement Killers, with Mira Sorvino and Asian superstar Chow Yun-Fat. The public was then treated to a very different Gregson-Williams score for The Borrowers, a liveaction version of the classic English children's story. Gregson-Williams went on to team up with legendary rock guitarist Trevor Rabin for the scores to Armageddon and Enemy of the State for Jerry Bruckheimer. Following was the computer animated movie Antz. Then Gregson-Williams wrote a Celtic-themed score for The Match, a romantic comedy for director Mick Davis. All of these projects were in addition to composing selected cues for the animated The Price of Egypt. Gregson-Williams' diverse work continued with his scores to big studio films interspersed with smaller independent movies. In 1999 after completing the score for King of the Jungle, starring John Leguizamo and Rosie Perez, Gregson-Williams scored the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced TV movie, Swing Vote. He also simultaneously completed the independent film The Magic of Marciano, starring Nastassja Kinsky, and the urban drama Light It Up, produced by Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. 2000 found Gregson-Williams scoring two of the year's most successful family films - The Tigger Movie and Chicken Run. He also composed the music for a British independent film, Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?. Later that year Konami approached Harry to write music for the video game Metal Gear Solid 2. Becoming a recognized and a highly sought-after talent in Hollywood, Gregson-Williams scored the animated feature Shrek and Tony Scott's feature Spy Game, featuring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Later that year, he completed an album cowritten with guitarist Peter Distefano (Porno for Pyros), which features vocalists Peter Murphy, Divine Styler, Miho Hatori, and Lizbeth Scott. Instrumentalists include Flea (Red Hot Chill Peppers) amongst others. Gregson-Williams' met director Joel Schummacher in 2002, which led him to scoring Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell, and Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett. Most recently, Gregson-Williams has scored such films as the animated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Peter Berg's The Rundown and Tony Scott's Man on Fire, as well as the television series Father of the Pride and the video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Upcoming projects include Bille August's Return to Sender, Eric Darnell's and Tom McGrath's animated Madagascar and Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Jany Temime (Costume Designer) most recently designed the costumes for the wizards and villains of Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and will perform the same task for the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire. Her other credits include Todd Komarnicki's Resistance, Mel Smith's High Heels and Low Lifes, Werner Herzog's Invincible, Marleen Gorris' The Luzhin Defence, Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1, Ed Thomas' Rancid Aluminum and Marc Evans' House of America, for which she won the BAFTA Wales Award for Best Costume Design. Additional credits include George Sluizer's The Commissioner and Marleen Gorris' Antonia's Line, which won the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Golden Calf for Costume Design, Film Festival Utrecht. |