Andrew Birkin | |
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| Born | Andrew Timothy Birkin (1945-12-09)9 December 1945 (age 79) London, England |
| Occupation(s) | Director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1972–present |
| Spouse | Karen Birkin |
| Children | 5, includingDavid andAnno Birkin |
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Andrew Timothy Birkin (born 9 December 1945) is an English screenwriter and director.
Birkin is the only son of Lieutenant-Commander David Leslie Birkin (grandson of the lace manufacturer and railway directorSir Thomas Birkin, 1st Baronet) and his wife, actressJudy Campbell. One of his sisters was actress and singerJane Birkin.[1] Birkin was educated atElstree School andHarrow School. At the former he was remembered by a teacher as being "one of the naughtiest boys ever to have passed through Elstree"[2] and his record at Harrow was no better.
He left school at the age of 17 to work as a mail boy at20th Century Fox's London office, graduating toElstree Studios as a production runner in 1963 onMan in the Middle andThe Third Secret. After hitch-hiking and freight-jumping across America in 1964, he returned to England in 1965 and began work as a runner onStanley Kubrick's2001: A Space Odyssey, but soon became Kubrick's location scout.[3] By the summer of 1966, Kubrick had promoted Birkin to Assistant Director on Special Effects;[4] Birkin later proposed the shooting and colour transposition of aerial footage for the 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite' sequence. Kubrick dispatched him to Scotland with cameraman Jack Atcheler and a 65mm Panaflex camera bolted to the floor of an Alouette helicopter; but Atcheler soon quit the enterprise, deeming Birkin to be reckless. Birkin continued alone and shot most of the resulting footage himself.[5][6][7] In 1967 Birkin supervised the shooting of 'The Dawn of Man' front projection plates in theNamib Desert.[3][4][8]
After working as First Assistant Director tothe Beatles onMagical Mystery Tour in 1967, Birkin served as Location Manager onPlay Dirty in Spain before again working forStanley Kubrick, this time as his assistant director and location scout on his unmade epic ofNapoleon.[6][9][10] Following second unit directing work onMelody, Birkin began writing scripts for producerDavid Puttnam, includingThe Pied Piper (1971) for directorJacques Demy,[11]Slade In Flame (1974) for the rock bandSlade (which won the Vision Award at the2007 MOJO Awards, and was described as the "Citizen Kane of rock musicals" by BBC film critic Mark Kermode[12]), and an unmade adaptation ofAlbert Speer'sInside the Third Reich for Puttnam andParamount, which involved a year's consultation with Speer in 1971/72.[11][13]
Having worked on an adaptation ofPeter Pan forNBC in 1975, Birkin conceived and wroteThe Lost Boys (1978), a three-part mini-series for theBBC about Peter Pan's creatorJ. M. Barrie, which won him writing awards from theWriters Guild of Great Britain and theRoyal Television Society. The critic Sean Day-Lewis wrote inThe Daily Telegraph, 'I doubt if biography has ever been better televised than in this sensitive and beautifully crafted masterpiece, and I am quite sure such excellence is beyond any other television service in the world.'[14] The BBC's Director-General SirIan Trethowan called it 'a landmark in television drama'.[15] Birkin has also written a biographical account of Barrie's relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family,J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979; 2nd edition 2003), described byThe Oxford Companion to Children's Literature as 'the most candid and perceptive biography to have been written of Barrie'.[16] Birkin also hosts Barrie's official website on behalf of theGreat Ormond Street Hospital, to whom he donated his Barrie/Llewelyn Davies/Peter Pan archive in 2004.[17]
In 1980, Birkin won aBAFTA award and anAcademy Award nomination for his short filmSredni Vashtar, based on the short story bySaki, which he wrote, produced and directed for 20th Century Fox. In 1984 he wrote the shooting script forThe Name of the Rose (in which he also had a small acting role), and in 1988 he wrote and directedBurning Secret, based on the novel byStefan Zweig, which won two awards at the 1989Venice Film Festival, as well as the Young Jury prize for Best Film at the Brussels Film Festival. In 1993, Birkin wrote and directedThe Cement Garden, based on the novel byIan McEwan, for which he won theSilver Bear for Best Director at theBerlin Film Festival,[18] as well as Best Film at several film festivals, including Dinard, Fort Lauderdale, and Birmingham.[19] In 1998 he collaborated withLuc Besson on the script ofThe Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and in 2004 co-wrote the screenplay forPerfume: The Story of a Murderer.
In 2013,Taschen published a selection of his photographs and an autobiographical essay inJane & Serge: A Family Album. In 2017 he wrote an adaptation ofPeter Pan for Radio France.
Birkin has four sons and a daughter.David Birkin (born 1977), artist and photographer, is his eldest son, followed byAnno Birkin (1980–2001), poet and musician, and Ned Birkin (born 1985), whom Birkin directed inThe Cement Garden. He is married to artist Karen Birkin, with whom he has a daughter, Emily Jane (born December 2008) and a son, Thomas Bernie (born April 2011). Two of his nieces are actresses:Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared inThe Cement Garden, andLou Doillon.
He lives on theLlŷn Peninsula inNorth Wales.
Birkin is a trustee of the children's arts charity Anno's Africa.
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