Andrew Birkin (b.
9 December 1945 in
Harrow,
London) is an
English screenwriter,
director, and occasional
actor. He was born the only son of Lieutenant-Commander David Birkin and his wife, the actress
Judy Campbell. One of his sisters is the actress
Jane Birkin.
Work
Birkin left
Harrow School at the age of 17 to work as a mail boy at
20th Century Fox’s London office, graduating to Elstree Studios as a production runner in 1963. He began work as a runner on
Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey in 1965, but soon became Kubrick's location scout.
[Dan Richter, Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space of Odyssey (2002)] By the summer of 1966, Kubrick had promoted Birkin to Assistant Director on Special Effects;
[Piers Bizony, 2001: Filming the Future (2000)] Birkin later proposed the shooting and color transposition of aerial footage for the 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite' sequence, some of which he filmed from a helicopter over Scotland
[Michel Ciment, Kubrick (1999) ][Rolf Thissen, Stanley Kubrick: Der Regisseur als Architekt (1999)]. In 1967 Birkin supervised the shooting of 'The Dawn of Man' front projection plates in the Namib Desert.
[John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997)] In 1968, Kubrick again engaged Birkin as his assistant director and location scout on his unmade epic of
Napoleon.
[John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997)][Rolf Thissen, Stanley Kubrick: Der Regisseur als Architekt (1999)][Deutsches Filmmuseum (Ed.): Stanley Kubrick (2004)]
After working as First Assistant Director to
The Beatles on
Magical Mystery Tour in 1967, Birkin began writing scripts for producer
David Puttnam, including
The Pied Piper (1971) for director
Jacques Demy[Andrew Yule, Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle For Hollywood (1989)],
Slade In Flame (1974) for the rock band
Slade (which won the Vision Award at the
2007 MOJO Awards), and an unmade adaptation of
Albert Speer's
Inside the Third Reich for Puttnam and
Paramount, which involved a year’s collaboration and taped interviews with Speer in 1972.
[James Park, Learning to Dream: The New British Cinema, 1984]
Having worked on an adaptation of
Peter Pan for
NBC in 1975, Birkin conceived and wrote
The Lost Boys (1978), a 3-part mini-series for the
BBC about Peter Pan's creator
J. M. Barrie, which won him writing awards from the
Writers Guild of Great Britain and The
Royal Television Society. The critic Sean Day-Lewis wrote in
The Daily Telegraph, 'I doubt if biography has ever been better televised than in this sensitive and beautifully crafted masterpiece, and I am quite sure such excellence is beyond any other television service in the world.'
[The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 1978] The BBC's Director-General Sir
Ian Trethowan called it 'a landmark in television drama'.
[The Guardian, 6 November 1978] Birkin has also written a biographical account of Barrie's relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family,
J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979; 2nd edition 2003), described by
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature as 'the most candid and perceptive biography to have been written of Barrie'.
[Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 1984] Birkin also hosts Barrie's official website on behalf of the
Great Ormond Street Hospital, to whom he donated his Barrie/Llewelyn Davies/Peter Pan archive in 2004.
[Sotheby's Catalogue, English Literature, including the Archive of J. M. Barrie and The Lost Boys, 16 December 2004]
In 1980, Birkin won a
BAFTA award and an
Academy Award nomination for his short film
Sredni Vashtar, based on the short story by
Saki, which he wrote, produced and directed for 20th Century Fox. In 1984 he wrote the shooting script for
The Name of the Rose (in which he also had a small acting role), and in 1988 he wrote and directed
Burning Secret, based on the novel by
Stefan Zweig, which won two awards at the 1989
Venice Film Festival, as well as the Young Jury prize for Best Film at the Brussels Film Festival. In 1993, Birkin wrote and directed
The Cement Garden, based on the novel by
Ian McEwan, for which he won the Silver Bear as best director at the
Berlin Film Festival, as well as Best Film at several film festivals, including Dinard, Fort Lauderdale, and Birmingham.
[Time Out, October 20-27 1993] In 1998 he collaborated with
Luc Besson on the script of
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and in 2004 co-wrote the screenplay for
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
Private Life
Birkin has three sons:
David Birkin (born 1977), artist and photographer;
Anno Birkin (born 1980), poet and musician, who was killed in 2001; and Ned Birkin (born 1985), whom Birkin directed in
The Cement Garden and with whom he is currently writing a television docudrama. Two of his nieces are actresses:
Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in
The Cement Garden, and
Lou Doillon. He is married to artist Karen Birkin, with whom he has a daughter, Emily Jane (born 2008). He lives in North Wales.
Filmography
- The Pied Piper (writer)
- Slade In Flame (writer, Mojo Vision Award winner, 2007)
- Peter Pan (co-writer)
- The Thief of Bagdad (writer)
- The Lost Boys (writer, won Royal Television Society Award for Best Writer, Writers Guild of Great Britain Award)
- Omen III: The Final Conflict (writer, associate producer)
- Sredni Vashtar (writer, producer, director, winner of BAFTA Award for Best Short Film, 1981; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film, Live Action)
- King David (co-writer)
- The Name of the Rose (co-writer)
- Burning Secret (writer, director; winner of Young Jury Prize, Brussels Film Festival, 1989)
- Salt On Our Skin (co-writer with Bridget Gilbert; director)
- The Cement Garden (writer, director; winner of Silver Berlin Bear for Best Director, 1992; nominated for Golden Berlin Bear; winner of the Golden Hitchcock at the Dinard Festival of British Cinema; nominated for Best Film at Mystfest)
- The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (co-writer with Luc Besson)
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (co-writer)
Books
- Author, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (Constables, 1979; Revised Edition: Yale University Press, 2003)
