- Born
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Alan Bennett is an award-winning dramatist and screenwriter who is best known as a member of Beyond the Fringe (1964) (a satirical review that was a hit on both the London stage and on Broadway and featured fellow members Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore) and for his plays The Madness of King George (1994) and The History Boys (2006). Bennett and Miller also collaborated on the TV sketch show On the Margin (1966).
In 1995, Bennett was nominated for an Academy Award for his adaptation of his own play "The Madness of King George." He has declined a knighthood and an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood - It was at Oxford in the 60's that he joined up with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller to create their revue Beyond the Fringe which was a huge success at the Edinburgh Festival and later took London by storm initiating a new kind of satire with formerly taboo subjects such as politics and religion as it's targets. After the revue he began to devote more of his energy to writing. His first West End play was Forty Years On in 1968 and revived in 1984. Another stage success came with Habeas Corpus which was staged in London with Alec Guinness who also stared in The Old Country in 1977. Since then Alan has mainly concentrated on television work with such as Rolling Home ,A Woman of no Importance, A Day Out and Intensive Care. In 1984 his play An Englishman Abroad won him a BAFTA writers award along with actor and actress awards for Alan Bates and Coral Browne. His first film screenplay was for A Private Function.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tonyman 5
- Alan was educated at Leeds Modern School and put forward for Oxford and Cambridge by his headmaster but while he wasn't prepared for the entrance exams he got a First at Oxford. He first appeared on stage in 1960 in the revue Beyond the Fringe. His stage plays include Forty Years On, The Old Country, Kafka's Dick, An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III, A Question of Attribution, The Lady in the Van, A lady of Letters and A Woman of No Importance (which he also directed and appeared in and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Entertainment and Most Outstanding Performance in a Musical or Entertainment) Bed Among the Lentils and Soldiering On (which he also directed) His work on television includes A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Visit from Miss Prothero, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Doris and Doreen, The Old Crowd, Afternoon Off, One Fine Day, All Day in the Sands,Intensive Care, Our Winnie,Rolling Home, A Woman of No Importance, An Englishman Abroad, and 2 collections of TAlking Heads monologues, the second of which won the South Bank Show ASward for Best Drama- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tonyman 5
- SpouseRupert Thomas(2006 - present)
- Laconic, morose, dead-pan Leeds accent
- Turned down an honorary degree from the University of Oxford because of the institution's financial links with Rupert Murdoch.
- In 1963, won a Special Tony Award, along with his "Beyond the Fringe" co-stars Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, "for their brilliance which has shattered all the old concepts of comedy," in a show that was recreated in a television version of the same title, Beyond the Fringe (1964).
- Underwent surgery for colon cancer in 1997, and was initially given only two years to live.
- He allegedly declined the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1988 and Knighthood in 1996.
- He allegedly refused the honour of a Knighthood in 1996.
- Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often think they have.
- One obstacle always stopped me directing films - namely, having to say, 'Action!' My instinct would be to say, 'Er, I think if everybody's agreeable we might as well sort of start now - that is if you're ready'.
- At 18 I thought that to be 'sensitive' was a writer's first requirement - with discipline and persistence nowhere.
- My claim to literary fame is that I used to deliver meat to a woman who became T.S. Eliot's mother-in-law.
- When [Harold] Pinter turned 50 I was asked to say something and couldn't think of anything. Later I thought there should be a two-minute silence.
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