Curated playlist
21st-century English male writers
- Simon KinbergSimon Kinberg plays a banker in his own script for Mr. & Mrs. Smith. He began that screenplay as a film school thesis.
- David CameronDavid Cameron's last words in the Commons were "I was the future once." He said them in July 2016.
- Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan has no smartphone and no email address. He hand-delivers his scripts to the actors he wants.
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacDonald, the English music critic, was born Ian MacCormick and wrote under a name that was not quite his own. Behind the pseudonym stood a man who studied at Cambridge, edited for a music weekly, wrote song lyrics, and even played…
- Sacha Baron CohenSacha Baron Cohen spilled flour on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars. He claimed it was Kim Jong-il's ashes.
- Ringo StarrRingo Starr's first drum was a cotton bobbin used to tap the cabinets by his hospital bed.
- Stephen HawkingDoctors gave Stephen Hawking two years to live at age 21, but he died at 76.
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott wrote Skylanders novels under the pen name Onk Beakman. The first was The Machine of Doom in 2012.
- David AttenboroughAt 11, David Attenborough sold newts to a university for three pence each.
- Rowan AtkinsonRowan Atkinson played one synthesizer note, over and over, at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The moment came during a performance of "Chariots of Fire". Atkinson appeared as Mr. Bean, and the single note soon…
- Mark LewisohnA famous joke about Ringo Starr was long credited to John Lennon, but Mark Lewisohn found no record he said it.
- MorrisseySteven Patrick Morrissey, known to the world as Morrissey, once led a tour of Manchester for the Oxford Road Show in 1985. Late in that tour he reached the secondary school he had attended. He described it in harsh terms and closed with a…
- Eric ChristiansenHistorian Eric Christiansen won his Oxford fellowship with a thesis on modern Spain.