Rowan

Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian
Atkinson, CBE (born 6
January 1955) is an English
actor, comedian,
and screenwriter best known for his work on
the sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean. Atkinson first came to
prominence in the BBC's sketch comedy show Not the Nine
O'Clock News (197982), receiving the 1981 BAFTA for Best
Entertainment Performance, and via his participation in The
Secret Policeman's Ball from 1979. His other work includes
the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again, playing a
bumbling vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994),
voicing the red-billed hornbill Zazu in The Lion King (1994),
and featuring in the BBC sitcom The Thin Blue Line (1995
1996). His work in theatre includes the 2009 West End revival
of the musical Oliver!.
Atkinson was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest
actors in British comedy,[2] and amongst the top 50 comedians
ever, in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians.[3] In addition to his
1981 BAFTA, he received an Olivier Award for his 1981 West
End theatre performance in Rowan Atkinson in Revue. He has
also had cinematic success with his performances in the Mr.
Bean movie adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday, and
also in Johnny English (2003) and its sequel Johnny English
Reborn (2011).
Rowan Atkinson
CBE

Atkinson at
the Johnny English

Reborn premire in

2011

Birth name Rowan Sebastian Atkinson

Born 6 January 1955 (age 62)

Consett, County Durham, England

Medium Stand up, television, film

Alma mater The Queen's College, Oxford

Years active 1978present

 Genres Physical comedy, black comedy, satire

Spouse Sunetra Sastry (m. 1990; div. 2015)

Children 2

Relative(s) Rodney Atkinson

Early life
Atkinson, the youngest of four brothers, was born in Consett, County Durham, England, on 6
January 1955.[4][5][6][7]

His parents were Eric Atkinson, a farmer and company director, and Ella May (ne Bainbridge),
who married on 29 June 1945.[7] His three older brothers are Paul, who died as an infant; Rodney,
a Eurosceptic economist who narrowly lost the United Kingdom Independence Party leadership
election in 2000; and Rupert.[8][9]

Atkinson was brought up Anglican,[10] and was educated at Durham Choristers School a
preparatory school, St. Bees School, and Newcastle University, where he received a degree in
Electrical Engineering.[11] In 1975, he continued for the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering
at The Queen's College, Oxford, the same college where his father matriculated in 1935,[12] and
which made Atkinson an Honorary Fellow in 2006.[13]

First winning national attention in the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August
1976,[11] he had already written and performed early sketches for shows in Oxford by the Etceteras
the revue group of the Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), and for the Oxford University Dramatic
Society (OUDS), meeting writer Richard Curtis,[11] and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he
would continue to collaborate during his career.

Career
Radio
Atkinson starred in a series of comedy shows for BBC Radio 3 in 1978 called The Atkinson People.
It consisted of a series of satirical interviews with fictional great men, who were played by Atkinson
 himself. The series was written by Atkinson and Richard
Curtis, and produced by Griff Rhys Jones.[14]

Television
After university, Atkinson toured with Angus Deayton as
his straight man in an act that was eventually filmed for a
television show. After the success of the show, he did a one-
off pilot for London Weekend Television in 1979
called Canned Laughter. Atkinson then went on to do Not
the Nine O'Clock News for the BBC, produced by his friend John Lloyd. He featured in the show
with Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, and was one of the main sketch writers.

The success of Not the Nine O'Clock News led to him taking the lead role in the medieval
sitcom The Black Adder (1983), which he also co-wrote with Richard Curtis. After a three-year gap,
in part due to budgetary concerns, a second series was broadcast, this time written by Curtis
and Ben Elton. Blackadder II (1986) 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 the two more
sequels Blackadder the Third (1987) (set in the Regency era), and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989)
(set in World War I). The Blackadder series became one of the most successful of all BBC situation
comedies, spawning television specials including Blackadder's Christmas
Carol (1988), Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988), and later Blackadder: Back & Forth (1999),
which was set at the turn of the Millennium. The final scene of "Blackadder Goes Forth" (when
Blackadder and his men go "over the top" and charge into No-Man's-Land) has been described as
"bold and highly poignant".[15] During the 2014 centennial of the start of World War I, Michael
Gove and war historian Max Hastings complained about the so-called "Blackadder version of
history".[16][17][18]

Atkinson in 1997, promoting Bean. In 2014, young adults from abroad named Mr. Bean among a group of
people they most associated with UK culture.[19]

Atkinson's other creation, the hapless Mr. Bean, first appeared on New Year's Day in 1990 in a
half-hour special for Thames Television. The character of Mr. Bean has been likened to a modern-
day Buster Keaton,[20] but Atkinson himself has stated that Jacques Tati's character Monsieur
Hulot was the main inspiration.[21]

Several sequels to Mr. Bean appeared on television until 1995, and the character later appeared
in a feature film. Bean (1997) was directed by Mel Smith, Atkinson's colleague in Not the Nine
O'Clock News. A second film, Mr. Bean's Holiday, was released in 2007. In 1995 and 1996,
Atkinson portrayed Inspector Raymond Fowler in The Thin Blue Line television sitcom written by
Ben Elton, which takes place in a police station located in fictitious Gasforth.
Atkinson has fronted campaigns for Kronenbourg,[22] Fujifilm, and Give Blood. Atkinson appeared
as a hapless and error-prone espionage agent named Richard Lathum in a long-running series of
adverts for Barclaycard, on which character his title role in Johnny English and Johnny English
Reborn was based. In 1999, he played the Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death, a special Doctor
Who serial produced
for Comic Relief.
Atkinson appeared as
the Star in a
Reasonably Priced
Car on Top Gear in July
2011, driving the Kia
Cee'd around the track
in 1:42.2, placing him at
the top of the
leaderboard until Matt
LeBlanc later recorded a 1:42.1 lap time.

Atkinson appeared at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London as Mr. Bean in a
comedy sketch during a performance of "Chariots of Fire", playing a repeated single note
on synthesizer.[23] He then lapsed into a dream sequence in which he joined the runners from
the film of the same name (about the 1924 Summer Olympics), beating them in their iconic run
along West Sands at St. Andrews, by riding in a minicab and tripping the front runner.[24] Atkinson
starred as Jules Maigret in Maigret, a series of TV films from ITV.[25]

Retirement of Mr. Bean

In November 2012, it emerged that Rowan Atkinson intended to retire Mr. Bean. "The stuff that
has been most commercially successful for me basically quite physical, quite childish I
increasingly feel I'm going to do a lot less of," Atkinson told the Daily Telegraph's Review. "Apart
from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their 50s being
childlike becomes a little sad. You've got to be careful."[26] He has also said that the
role typecast him to a degree.[27]

In January 2014, however, ITV announced a new animated series featuring Mr. Bean with Rowan
Atkinson returning to the role. It was expected to be released online as a web-series later in 2014,
as a television broadcast followed shortly after.[28] In October 2014, Atkinson also appeared as Mr.
Bean in a TV advert for Snickers. In 2015, he starred alongside Ben Miller and Rebecca Front in
a sketch for BBC Red Nose Day in which Mr. Bean attends a funeral. In 2017, he appeared as Mr
Bean in the Chinese film Huan Le Xi Ju Ren.[29]
The end