Rowan Atkinson

• 1. Introduction

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  Rowan 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 gave way to a daydream. In it, he joined the runners from the film about the 1924 Summer Olympics on the sands of West Sands at St. Andrews. He beat them by riding in a minicab and tripping the front runner.

  It was a strange honour for a performer who built his name on tight control and perfect timing. How did a young man from the north of England end up there? What makes his comedy work, with words and without them? And why did he sometimes doubt the character who carried him so far?

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• 2. Oxford to Television

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  Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born on the 6th of January 1955, in either Consett, County Durham, or Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. He was the youngest of four boys. His father, Eric, was a farmer and company director. His mother was Ella May, born Bainbridge, and the couple married on the 29th of June 1945.

  Three older brothers came before him. Paul died as an infant. Rodney became an economist and Eurosceptic who narrowly lost the UK Independence Party leadership election in 2000. The third brother is Rupert.

  Durham Chorister School, a preparatory school, taught Rowan, Rodney and Rupert, who grew up in Consett. Another pupil there was the future Prime Minister Tony Blair. Atkinson was raised Anglican and went on to St Bees School.

  Strong science A levels earned him a place at Newcastle University. There he took a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1975. Next came The Queen's College, Oxford, where his father had studied in 1935. Atkinson began a PhD, then gave his full attention to acting. He still finished an MSc in Electrical Engineering. His master's thesis, published in 1978, examined the application of self-tuning control. The college made him an Honorary Fellow in 2006.

  In August 1976, The Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe gave Atkinson his first national attention. By then he had written and performed sketches for the Etceteras, the revue group of the Experimental Theatre Club. He had done the same for the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Those student shows introduced him to writer Richard Curtis and composer Howard Goodall. Both men would keep working with him for decades.

  The BBC Radio 3 series The Atkinson People reached listeners in 1979. It was a set of satirical interviews with fictional great men, and Atkinson played every one of them. He wrote it with Richard Curtis, and Griff Rhys Jones produced it.

  Television followed within months. London Weekend Television made a one-off pilot with him called Canned Laughter. In June 1979 he performed on the third Secret Policeman's Ball, which the BBC broadcast. The live show was staged in London for Amnesty International, and members of Monty Python also appeared in it.

  In October 1979, Atkinson first appeared on Not the Nine O'Clock News for the BBC. His friend John Lloyd produced the show, which ran until 1982. Atkinson shared the screen with Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. He was also one of its main sketch writers.

  A four-month tour of the UK came in 1980. His show at the Grand Opera House in Belfast was recorded and released as Live in Belfast. In 1981 he won a British Academy Television Award for Not the Nine O'Clock News. That year he also won an Olivier Award for his West End performance in Rowan Atkinson in Revue.

  His solo television sketches, performed without dialogue, have included an invisible drum kit and an invisible piano. He also appeared in skits with Elton John, with John Cleese in one called "Beekeeping", and with Kate Bush. In 1986, he and Bush performed the humorous song "Do Bears... ?" for Comic Relief. The success of Not the Nine O'Clock News soon led to a very different job, in a mock-historical comedy for the BBC.

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• 3. Edmund Blackadder

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  Tony Robinson played Baldrick, the long-suffering sidekick, opposite Atkinson in the title role of Edmund Blackadder. The cast also included Tim McInnerny, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.

  The first series, The Black Adder, reached screens in 1983. Atkinson co-wrote it with Richard Curtis. It was set in the mediaeval period, and its title character was unintelligent and naive.

  Blackadder II, in 1986, marked a turning point. Curtis wrote it with Ben Elton. It followed a descendant of the original character in the Elizabethan era, now reinvented as a devious anti-hero. Metro later wrote, "watching Atkinson work in series two is to watch a master of the sarcastic retort in action".

  Blackadder the Third came in 1987 and moved the story to the Regency era. Blackadder Goes Forth followed in 1989, set in World War I. Its final scene shows Blackadder and his men going "over the top" into No-Man's-Land. It has been described as "bold and highly poignant".

  Specials filled the gaps between series. Blackadder's Christmas Carol and Blackadder: The Cavalier Years both appeared in 1988. Blackadder: Back & Forth followed in 1999 and was set at the turn of the Millennium. The franchise became one of the most successful of all BBC situation comedies.

  A 2001 Channel 4 poll of the 100 Greatest TV Characters ranked Edmund Blackadder third. Only Homer Simpson and Basil Fawlty finished ahead of him. His acerbic wit and stock of quick put-downs are often wasted on the people they are aimed at.

  On the 28th of November 2012, Atkinson brought the character back at the "We are Most Amused" comedy gala for The Prince's Trust. The venue was the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Tony Robinson joined him as Baldrick. It was the first new Blackadder material for 10 years. In the sketch, Blackadder was CEO of Melchett, Melchett and Darling bank, facing an enquiry over the banking crisis. That creation lived on sharp language, while Atkinson's second great character would lean on the body instead of the barb.

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• 4. Mr. Bean

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  New Year's Day 1990 brought Mr. Bean to television, in a half-hour special for Thames Television. The hapless character has been likened to a modern-day Buster Keaton. Atkinson himself named Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot as the main inspiration.

  Atkinson saw Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday at 17. He later said Tati "opened a window to a world that I'd never looked out on before". He described his own creation as entirely selfish and self-centred, "a child in a man's body".

  Several sequels reached television until 1995. The film Bean followed in 1997, directed by Mel Smith, Atkinson's colleague from Not the Nine O'Clock News. A second film, Mr. Bean's Holiday, arrived in 2007 and drew partly on Tati's Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot. Both films became international successes.

  Mr. Bean: The Animated Series has run since 2002, with Atkinson voicing the character. In January 2014, ITV announced a new animated series with Atkinson returning to the role. A third series of 26 episodes aired from the 9th of April 2019, starting with the segments "Game Over" and "Special Delivery" on CITV. In February 2019, all three series, 104 episodes in total, were sold to the Chinese children's channel CCTV-14.

  In November 2012, Atkinson let it be known that he intended to retire Mr. Bean. He told The Daily Telegraph's Review that the physical, childish work that had paid best was something he expected to do far less of. He thought that "someone in their 50s being childlike becomes a little sad". He also said the role had typecast him to a degree.

  By 2016, he had reversed course and said he would never retire the character. The character kept turning up regardless. In October 2014, Mr. Bean appeared in a TV advert for Snickers. In 2015, Atkinson starred with Ben Miller and Rebecca Front in a BBC Red Nose Day sketch in which Mr. Bean attends a funeral. In 2017, he appeared as Mr. Bean in the Chinese film Huan Le Xi Ju Ren.

  On The Graham Norton Show in 2018, Atkinson said Mr. Bean was unlikely to return to television. He then added, "you must never say never". In February 2019, he appeared as Mr. Bean in a commercial for the Emirati telecommunications company Etisalat. He also narrated it and played several characters, including a Scottish warrior, a footballer and a masked, sword-wielding Spanish vigilante.

  The internet gave the character a second life. In October 2018, the Mr. Bean channel earned YouTube's Diamond Play Button after passing 10 million subscribers. In 2018 it had more than 6.5 billion views. By July 2020, the Mr. Bean Facebook page had 94 million followers, "more than the likes of Rihanna, Manchester United or Harry Potter".

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• 5. Films, Stage and Adverts

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  Never Say Never Again, the 1983 James Bond film, gave Atkinson a supporting part in his first film. The same year he led Dead on Time, alongside Nigel Hawthorne. In 1988 he appeared in The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, an Oscar-winning short film. Mel Smith's directorial debut, The Tall Guy, followed in 1989.

  The Witches, in 1990, adapted Roald Dahl's dark fantasy novel for children. Atkinson appeared in it alongside Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling. In 1993 he played Dexter Hayman in Hot Shots! Part Deux, a parody of Rambo III starring Charlie Sheen.

  Four Weddings and a Funeral, in 1994, cast him as a verbally bumbling vicar. Richard Curtis wrote and directed the film. That same year Atkinson voiced Zazu, a red-billed hornbill, in Disney's The Lion King. He also sang "I Just Can't Wait to Be King".

  Supporting roles in comedies kept coming. He appeared in Rat Race in 2001 and Scooby-Doo in 2002. In 2003, Love Actually, another Curtis romantic comedy, gave him the part of Rufus, a jewellery salesman. Keeping Mum followed in 2005, with Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and Patrick Swayze.

  Richard Lathum, a hapless and error-prone spy, appeared in a long-running series of Barclaycard adverts. That character became the basis for Johnny English, the James Bond parody series that began in 2003. Johnny English Reborn and Johnny English Strikes Again followed. In February 2024, a fourth Johnny English film was announced. Atkinson also fronted campaigns for Kronenbourg, Fujifilm and Give Blood.

  In 2023, Atkinson played a priest, Father Julius, in Wonka, a prequel to Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His television roles have ranged widely. In 1999 he played the Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special for Comic Relief. From 1995 to 1996 he played Inspector Raymond Fowler in Ben Elton's police sitcom The Thin Blue Line, set in the fictitious town of Gasforth.

  From 2016 to 2017, he starred as French police commissioner Jules Maigret in ITV's Maigret. He later played Trevor Bingley in the Netflix sitcoms Man vs. Bee in 2022 and Man vs. Baby in 2025.

  In 1984, he appeared in a West End version of the comedy play The Nerd, alongside a 10-year-old Christian Bale. The Sneeze and Other Stories followed at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in 1988 and early 1989. It comprised seven short Anton Chekhov plays translated and adapted by Michael Frayn. Atkinson performed in it with Timothy West and Cheryl Campbell.

  In 2009, he played Fagin in the West End revival of the musical Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. His acting and singing drew favourable reviews, and he was nominated for an Olivier Award. In February 2013, he took the title role in the Simon Gray play Quartermaine's Terms. The 12-week run at Wyndham's Theatre in London was directed by Richard Eyre, with Conleth Hill and Felicity Montagu in the cast.

  In December 2013, he revived his schoolmaster sketch for the Royal Free Hospital's Rocks with Laughter at the Adelphi Theatre. A few days earlier, he had performed a selection of sketches in a small coffee venue in front of only 30 people.

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• 6. The Deadpan Craft

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  Journalist Anwar Brett observed that Atkinson, though beloved for both Blackadder and Bean, "takes his comedy very seriously". Mr. Bean is his best-known use of physical comedy, while his other characters depend more on language. He often plays authority figures, especially priests and vicars, who say absurd lines with a completely deadpan delivery.

  Oliver Parker, who directed Johnny English, recalled a scene set in a meeting. The hero goes up and down on an office chair, and Atkinson held his focus perfectly. Everyone else was struggling not to laugh, and when Parker called "cut!" there was "an explosion of laughter". Atkinson has a stammer, and he has said it occurs less often when he plays roles than when he speaks as himself.

  Beyond the Fringe shaped his early taste. That sketch troupe was made up of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, major figures of the 1960s British satire boom. Monty Python came next, and Atkinson recalls watching them avidly as a student at university. He called John Cleese "a major, major inspiration", describing Cleese's comedy as "very physical and very angry".

  Peter Sellers left a clear mark too. Sellers played Hrundi Bakshi in The Party in 1968 and Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films. Those characters influenced Atkinson's creations Mr. Bean and Johnny English. Barry Humphries' Dame Edna Everage appealed to him for the opposite reason. He loved the "veneer of respectability disguising suburban prejudice" in that character. Among visual comedians, he names Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd as influences.

  The Observer listed Atkinson among the 50 funniest actors in British comedy in 2003. In a 2005 poll of fellow comedians, he ranked among the top 50 comedians ever. In the 2013 Birthday Honours, he was appointed CBE for services to drama and charity.

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• 7. Family, Cars and Close Calls

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  Sunetra Sastry, a makeup artist working for the BBC, met Atkinson in the late 1980s. They married in February 1990, had two children and lived in Apethorpe. Their son Ben became an army officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas. In 2013, at the age of 58, Atkinson began a relationship with the 32-year-old comedian Louise Ford, after they met performing in a play. Ford ended her relationship with the comedian James Acaster. Atkinson separated from his wife in 2014 and divorced her in 2015. He has one child with Ford.

  A category C+E lorry licence, formerly called Class 1, has been in his wallet since 1981. He got it because lorries fascinated him, and to help guarantee work as a young actor. He has also used the skill when filming comedy. In 1991 he starred in The Driven Man, a self-written series of sketches about an obsession with cars. In it he drove around London and discussed the problem with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists.

  In 1995 he played the racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle. He also raced a Renault 5 GT Turbo for two seasons in its one-make series. From 1997 to 2015, he owned a rare McLaren F1. In October 1999 it was involved in an accident near Garstang, Lancashire, with an Austin Metro. In August 2011 it caught fire in a serious crash, after Atkinson reportedly lost control and hit a tree. Repairs took over a year and produced the largest insurance payout in Britain, at £910,000.

  In July 2001, he crashed an Aston Martin V8 Zagato at an Aston Martin Owners Club event at the Croft Racing Circuit, Darlington. He walked away unhurt. Earlier, in May 1984, the Conservative politician Alan Clark noticed a dark red DBS V8 Aston Martin with its bonnet up on a slip road at Thame. Clark gave the stranded owner a lift in his Rolls-Royce. Only later did he realise it was Atkinson, who in Clark's published Diaries "didn't sparkle, was rather disappointing and chétif".

  He has owned a Honda NSX, an Audi A8, a Škoda Superb and a Honda Civic Hybrid. One car he says he will never own is a Porsche, because the typical Porsche owners are "not, I feel, my kind of people". In July 2011, he appeared as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car on Top Gear. He drove the Kia Cee'd around the track in 1:42.2, beating Tom Cruise's 1:44.2. Only Matt LeBlanc has since gone faster.

  In February 2024, a House of Lords report partly blamed Atkinson for poor sales of electric cars in the UK. It said he had "damaged" the public's perception of them. The report criticised his June 2023 opinion piece in The Guardian. He had been an early adopter of electric vehicles. In the piece he called them "fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run", but burdened by battery issues and misleading beliefs about their environmental impact.

  In March 2001, while Atkinson was on holiday in Kenya, the pilot of his private plane fainted. Atkinson kept the aircraft in the air until the pilot recovered. The pilot then landed it at Wilson Airport in Nairobi.

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• 8. Free Speech

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  In June 2005, Atkinson led a coalition of prominent actors and writers to the British Parliament. It included Nicholas Hytner, Stephen Fry and Ian McEwan. They wanted a review of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which they felt would give religious groups overwhelming power to impose censorship on the arts.

  He also opposed the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which he saw as targeting criticism of religion. His objection was that "one of the fundamental freedoms of society" is the freedom to criticise ideas, even sincerely held beliefs. In 2009, he urged the House of Lords to vote against a government attempt to remove a free-speech clause from an anti-gay hate law.

  In October 2012, Atkinson backed the Reform Section 5 campaign. It aims to change or repeal Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, under which an insult can be grounds for arrest. He saw several recent high-profile arrests as a restriction of freedom of expression. In February 2014, Parliament passed a change that removed the word "insulting" from the statute.

  In 2018, Atkinson defended Boris Johnson's joke about people who wear the burqa, which critics had called Islamophobic. Johnson later apologised. Atkinson wrote to The Times that, as a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to joke about religion, he thought it "a pretty good one". Former colleagues and fans condemned his remarks.

  In August 2020, he signed a letter coordinated by Humanist Society Scotland. Twenty other public figures also signed, including the novelist Val McDermid, the playwright Alan Bissett and the activist Peter Tatchell. The letter said the Scottish National Party's proposed Hate Crime and Public Order Bills would "risk stifling freedom of expression".

  In January 2021, he turned the argument toward online life and the rise of cancel culture. He called it "the digital equivalent of the medieval mob, roaming the streets looking for someone to burn". He blamed algorithms for a simplistic, binary view of society, in which anyone who is against us deserves to be "cancelled".

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