"Again, we turn down most books that have been self-published unless they have a special track record. We have taken a small number on, however, and sold them to major publishers for a nice sum. But that is an exception to the rule." -- Richard Curtis
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE (born 8 November 1958) is New Zealand-born British screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, and Love Actually, as well as the hit sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. He is also the founder of the British charity Comic Relief.
"Except for a few small presses, most publishers are north of Ground Zero.""I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books.""I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.""I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.""It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.""Laboratories can reduce risk by implementing a proven and internationally accepted quality assurance technology that is applicable across the globe.""The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics.""The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers.""We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there's very little we can do about that.""We are taking a business-as-usual position at my agency, though business before 9/11 wasn't that hot either!""We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can't imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!""You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher."
Curtis was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Glyness S. and Anthony J. Curtis, Richard Curtis Biography (1956-) who was an executive at Unilever. Curtis and his family lived in several different countries during his childhood, including Sweden and the Philippines. Part of the family still lives in Sydney, Australia. Curtis has lived in England since he was 11. He began school at Papplewick School, Ascot (as did his younger brother; Jamie), before he won a scholarship to Harrow, where he was head of school. He achieved a first-class degree in English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and it was at Oxford that he met, and began working with, Rowan Atkinson.
Curtis was the co-writer with Philip Pope of the Hee Bee Gee Bees' single "Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices)" released in 1980 to parody the style of a series of Bee Gees' disco hits. He then began to write comedy for film and TV. He was a regular writer on the TV series Not the Nine O'Clock News, where he wrote many of the show's songs with Howard Goodall and many sketches, often with Rowan Atkinson. First with Atkinson, and later with Ben Elton, Curtis then wrote the Blackadder series from 1983 to 1989, each season focusing upon a different era in British history. Atkinson played the lead throughout, but Curtis remains the only person to have been a writer for every episode of Blackadder. The pair continued their collaboration with the comedy series Mr. Bean. which ran from 1990-1995.
Curtis had by then already begun writing feature films. His first was The Tall Guy in 1989. The romantic comedy starred Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson and was produced by Working Title films. The TV movie Bernard and the Genie followed in 1991.
In 1994, Curtis created and co-wrote The Vicar of Dibley for comedian Dawn French, which was a great success. In an online poll conducted in 2004 Britain's Best Sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley was voted the third best sitcom in British history and Blackadder the second, making Curtis the only screenwriter to have created two shows within the poll's top ten programmes.
By this point, Curtis had already achieved his breakthrough success with the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. The 1994 film, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, was produced on a limited budget by the British production company Working Title Films. Four Weddings and a Funeral proved to be the biggest grossing British film in history at that time. It made an international star of Grant, and Curtis' Oscar nomination for the script catapulted him to prominence but Richard Curtis lost to Quentin Tarantino's script for Pulp Fiction. The film was nominated for Best Picture but lost to Forrest Gump.
Curtis' next film was also for Working Title, which has remained his artistic home ever since. 1999's Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, broke the record set by Four Weddings and a Funeral to become the top-grossing British film of all time. The story of a lonely travel bookstore owner who falls in love with the world's most famous movie star was directed by Roger Michell.
Curtis' next film for Working Title was not an original script. Instead, he was heavily involved with the adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary from novel to film. Curtis knew the novel's writer Helen Fielding. Indeed, he has credited her with saying that his original script for Four Weddings and a Funeral was too upbeat and needed the addition of a funeral. He is credited on Bridget Jones's Diary as co-writer.
Two years later Curtis re-teamed with Working Title to write and direct Love Actually. Curtis has said in interviews that his favorite film is Robert Altman's Nashville and the sprawling, multi-character structure of Love Actually certainly seems to owe something to Altman. The film featured a who's who of British actors, including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman and Keira Knightley, in a loosely connected series of stories about people in and out of love in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
The Girl in the Café was produced by the BBC and HBO as part of the Make Poverty History campaign's Live 8 efforts in 2005. The film stars Bill Nighy as a civil servant and Kelly Macdonald as a young woman with whom he falls in love while at a G8 summit in Iceland. Macdonald's character pushes him to ask whether the developed countries of the world cannot do more to help the most impoverished. The film was timed to air just before the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005. The film received three Emmy Awards in 2006 including Outstanding Made for Television Movie, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Kelly Macdonald, and an Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special trophy for Curtis himself.
In May 2007 he received the BAFTA Fellowship at the British Academy Television Awards in recognition of his successful career in film and television and his charity efforts.
Curtis cowrote with Anthony Minghella an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency which Minghella shot in mid-2007 in Botswana. It premiered on the BBC on 23 March 2008, just days after Minghella's death. The film did not run in the US until early 2009, when HBO aired it as the pilot of a resulting six-episode TV series with the same cast, on which Curtis served as Executive Producer.
His second film as writer/director, The Boat That Rocked, was released in 2009. The film was set in 1966 in the era of British pirate radio. It followed a group of DJs on a pirate radio station run from a boat in the North Sea. The film starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Rhys Ifans, Gemma Arterton and Kenneth Branagh. The film was a commercial and critical disappointment in the UK. Curtis re-edited the film for its US release where it was re-titled Pirate Radio.
Curtis was a founder of both Comic Relief and Make Poverty History. He organised the Live 8 concerts with Bob Geldof to publicise poverty, particularly in Africa, and pressure G8 leaders to adopt his proposals for ending it.
He talked the producer of American Idol into doing a show whereby celebrities journey into Africa and experience the level of poverty for themselves. The show was called Idol Gives Back.
Controversy
In October 2010, a short film created by Curtis entitled No Pressure was released by the 10:10 campaign in Britain to promote climate change politics. However, the video was swiftly removed from the organization's website following a storm of protest over the poor taste of its gory violence and sinister propagandist overtone. The film depicted a series of scenes in which people - including school-children - were asked if they were going to participate in 10:10 campaign. Those who indicated they weren't planning to do so were told "no pressure" and then eviscerated in an explosion at the nonchalant press of a red button. Commentators have noted that the theme is reminiscent of the hilarity which Mussolini's fascist supporters engaged in when they forced political opponents to drink castor oil.
Curtis lives in Notting Hill and has a country house in Walberswick, Suffolk - the same village in which former BBC1 controller Peter Fincham has a weekend retreat - with script editor and broadcaster Emma Freud. They have four children; daughter Scarlett Rachel Anne, and three sons, James, Charlie and Spike. They have another country retreat in Henley, Oxfordshire.
