Joe Wright is an English film director known for Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna, and
his 2012 adaptation of the classic Anna Karenina.
He is currently filming Pan, a retelling of Peter Pan.
Early life and career Wright was born on 25 August 1972 in London,
where his parents John and Lyndie founded the Little Angel Theatre, a puppet theatre
in Islington.
Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting.
He would also make films on his Super 8 camera as well as spend time in the evenings acting
in a drama club.
Wright is dyslexic.
He left school without any GCSEs.
He began his career working at his parents' puppet theatre.
He also took classes at the Anna Scher Theatre School and acted professionally on stage and
camera.
He spent an art foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts, before taking a degree in
fine art and film at Central St Martins.
In his last year of studies he received a scholarship to make a short film for the BBC
that won several awards.
On the success of the short, he was offered the script for the serial Nature Boy.
He followed this up with the serials Bodily Harm with Timothy Spall, and the highly acclaimed
Charles II: The Power and The Passion with Rufus Sewell which won the BAFTA Award for
Best Drama Serial.
During the 1990s he worked at Oil Factory, a music video production company based in
Caledonian Road, Kings Cross.
He worked on a variety of productions in numerous roles, including casting director.
Here he was able to get the opportunity to direct some music videos.
Alongside this, particularly on the strength of his short film work, he was also developing
The End, his second short film.
During this decade Wright also worked part-time as a roadie for Vegetable Vision who created
visuals for various electronic music bands, such as Chemical Brothers, Darren Emerson,
Underworld and Andrew Weatherall.
He attributes some of the aesthetic and emotion of the UK rave scene as an influence on his
work.
Personal life In 2007, Wright became engaged to actress
Rosamund Pike, but the wedding was called off in 2008.
Wright is married to sitarist Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar and half-sister of
Norah Jones.
They have a son named Zubin.
Feature films Pride & Prejudice
In 2005 he made the transition to feature films with the critically acclaimed Pride
& Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.
The film received numerous accolades including 4 Academy Award nominations, 6 BAFTA nominations
and a host of other nominations and wins.
Atonement Wright's next feature was an adaptation of
Ian McEwan's Booker Prize shortlisted novel Atonement, which was released in 2007, reuniting
Wright with Keira Knightley, and also stars James McAvoy.
On 13 December 2007, the film was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, more than any
other film that year.
Though Wright himself was not nominated for director, the film received seven Academy
Award nominations, winning only for Best Original Score.
At the BAFTA Awards it received 14 nominations and went on to win for Best Production Design
and Best Film.
The Soloist His next film was The Soloist which stars
Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr.
It is about the "true story of musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who developed schizophrenia
in his second year at Juilliard and ended up homeless on the streets of downtown L.A.
where he performs the violin and cello."
It was to be released on 21 November 2008; however the release date was pushed back to
24 April 2009.
Hanna Wright reunited with Atonement star Saoirse
Ronan for the action thriller Hanna.
The title character is a 15 year old girl trained since birth to be an assassin by her
father, a rogue CIA asset.
The movie received mostly positive reviews with Roger Ebert calling it a "first rate
thriller" in his review The film received an aggregate score of 65 from Metacritic,
meaning it received generally positive reviews.
Anna Karenina
Wright directed the 2012 screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel Anna Karenina.
The cast included Keira Knightley as Anna, Jude Law as her husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson
as her young love, Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson as Konstantin Levin, as well as Kelly Macdonald,
Olivia Williams, Matthew Macfadyen, and Michelle Dockery.
Saoirse Ronan and Andrea Riseborough were initially cast in the film, but dropped out
and were replaced by Alicia Vikander and Ruth Wilson, respectively.
Directorial trademarks After only five full-length features, Wright
has distinguished himself as a director, winning a BAFTA award for best newcomer for Pride
& Prejudice and becoming the youngest director ever to have a film open the Venice Film Festival
with Atonement.
According to the director's commentary on Pride & Prejudice, Wright is influenced by
the work of British film director David Lean, and possessing a certain knowledge of art
history, tries sometimes to compose his shots after classical paintings.
Charles II: The Power and The Passion, Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna all have
long tracking shots in them.
Atonement has a continuous 5 minute and 5 second shot of the Dunkirk evacuation.
"Basically, I just like showing off", Wright told the audience at the Hay Festival.
Filmography Casting and crew
References
External links Joe Wright at the Internet Movie Database