Mike NewellBirth Place: St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, UK Date of Birth: March 28, 1942 Heritage: British Famous for: Director of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994) Contact Mike Newell | 
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Four Weddings and a Funeral Background: "I don't like the term ‘chick flick.’ I think it denigrates a movie. It has overtones of talking down to women, like they are second best. We don't call 'The Last Samurai' a guy flick, do we?" Mike Newell British filmmaker Mike Newell had directed a handful of TV plays for Granada TV in England for many years before eventually graduating to the big screen. He made his feature directing debut with the supernatural horror "The Awakening" (1980; starring Charlton Heston, Susannah York, and Stephanie Zimbalist). He has since helmed such films as "Dance with a Stranger" (1985), "Amazing Grace and Chuck" (1987), "Enchanted April" (1992), "Into the West" (1992), "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994), "Donnie Brasco" (1997), "Pushing Tin" (1999), "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003), "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2005), and "Love in the Time of Cholera" (2007). The versatile film craftsman will direct the upcoming films "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" and "The Elfstones of Shannara." Newell is married to Bernice Stegers and the couple has three kids.
Childhood and Family: In St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, Michael Cormac Newell was born on March 28, 1942. He went to the same school (St. Albans School) as physicist Stephen Hawking and lyricist Sir Tim Rice. He was also educated at the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, England, and trained at Granada Television for three years. On September 13, 2007, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Lincoln, in England. Newell is married to Bernice Stegers, with whom he has three kids, including daughter Lizzie Newell and son Billy Newell (born in 1995). As of 2008, Lizzie works for the Independent talent agency that was once ICM.
Career: Trained for three years at Granada Television, Mike Newell graduated to directing TV plays. He joined Granada TV as a production trainee in 1963 and the next year directed a documentary called "Sharon." He also directed a comedy movie titled "Comedy Workshop: Love and Maud Carver." He later directed the television plays "The Kindness of Strangers" (1967), "The Visitors" (1968), "69 Murder - The Blood Relation" (1968), "The Gamekeeper" (1968), "Them Down There" (1968), and "Blood Relations" (1969). He also directed multiple episodes of such British TV series as the award winning soap opera "Coronation Street," the gangster show "Spindoe," the dramatic "Escape," the thriller series "Big Breadwinner Hog," the drama "Parkin's Patch," and an episode of "ITV Saturday Night Theatre." Entering the 1970s, Newell continued to work on television helming the TV plays "Arthur Wants You for a Sunbeam" (1970), "Allergy" (1970), "Death of a Dog" (1970), and "Mrs. Mouse, Are You Within?" (1971). He also directed a small film called "Big Soft Nelly Mrs. Mouse" (1971). During the following years, Newell added to his resume by directing the TV plays "The New Word" (1973), "£12 Look" (1973), "Barbara's Wedding" (1973), "The Melancholy Hussar" (1973), "The Gift of Friendship" (1974), "Silver Wedding" (1974), "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (1974), "Ms or Jill and Jack" (1974), "Lost Yer Tongue" (1975), "Of the Fields Lately" (1975), "The Boundary" (1975), and "The Midas Connection" (1975). He also helmed episodes of the science fiction comedy television series starring Ian Hendry and Ronald Lacey, "The Adventures of Don Quick," the television drama series "The Guardians," the dramas "The Man from Haven" and "Thirty-Minute Theatre," the popular British television series starring former pop star Adam Faith, "Budgie," the drama "Love Story," the anthology series "Wessex Tales," and BBC2 Playhouse's "Mrs. Acland's Ghosts." In 1977, Newell was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Single Play for his work in “Ready When You Are Mr. McGill,” a feature length TV drama written by Jack Rosenthal that was produced by ITV in two versions in 1976 and 2003. He also directed an episode of the TV series "Second City Firsts," as well as the TV movies "Honey" (1977) and "The Fosdyke Saga" (1977). "The Man in the Iron Mask" (1977; NBC) a made-for-television production starring Richard Chamberlain, marked Newell's American directing debut. He then returned to the U.K. to direct the TV movies "Charm" (1977) and "Little Girls Don't" (1978). He also helmed BBC2 Play of the Week's "Mr. & Ms. Bureaucrat" and several episodes of the British television anthology drama series "Play for Today." Hitting the new decade, Newell made his feature directing debut with "The Awakening" (1980), a supernatural horror film released by Warner Bros. that starred Charlton Heston, Susannah York, and Stephanie Zimbalist. He followed it up with "Bad Blood" (1981; starring Jack Thompson and Carol Burns), a period thriller set in the small West Coast town of Koiterangi (now Kowhitirangi) during World War II and based on the factual manhunt for mass murderer Stanley Graham. Returning to the small screen, Newell directed three episodes of "ITV Playhouse," as well as the TV movies "Birth of a Nation" (1982) and "Blood Feud" (1983). In the mid 1980s, Newell received a critical breakthrough with his film "Dance With a Stranger" (1985), a moving biographical piece about the final days of Ruth Ellis (portrayed by Miranda Richardson), the last woman to be hanged in Britain in the 1950s. The film won the Award of the Youth - Foreign Film at the Cannes Film Festival. Newell subsequently directed Jamie Lee Curtis in the well-intentioned basketball drama "Amazing Grace and Chuck" (1987) and had critical and commercial success with the romantic comedy based on the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, "Enchanted April" (1991; featuring Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, Polly Walker, and Alfred Molina). The movie won a Best Film Award at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 1992. He also directed Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Ciaran Fitzgerald, and Ruaidhri Conroy in his adventure film "Into the West" (1992), which won a Young Artist Award for Outstanding Family Foreign Film, the Nederlands Film Festival's Golden Calf (Best European Film), Cleveland International Film Festival's Best Film, and the Oulu International Children's Film Festival's Starboy Award. After directing two episodes of George Lucas's "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" (1993), Newell directed the internationally successful romantic comedy film "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994; starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell), which earned a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The film, which was an unexpected success, became the highest-grossing British film in cinema history (now the second). It won BAFTA Film's Best Film and the David Lean Award for Direction, César's Best Foreign Film, the Guild Film Award's Gold (Foreign Film), and the ALFS Award's British Director of the Year. In 1995, Newell directed the documentary "At Sundance" and the big-budget American film "Donnie Brasco" (1997). The latter film, loosely based on the real life events of Joseph D. Pistone and starring Al Pacino, Michael Madsen, and Johnny Depp, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and a Screen International Award at the European Film Awards. He also made first Dogstar film, "Photographing Fairies," a fantasy film based on Steve Szilagyi's novel of the same name that stars Toby Stephens, Emily Woof, and Ben Kingsley. Two years later, he directed John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett, and Angelina Jolie in the film "Pushing Tin" (1999). 2003 saw Newel direct Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles in the period drama film "Mona Lisa Smile," a loose adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." He then became the first British director to oversee a 'Harry Potter' film with "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2005; starring Daniel Radcliffe), which was adapted from the fourth book in the popular fantasy series by J.K. Rowling. The film earned him a Saturn Award nomination for Best Direction at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in 2006. "I was very anxious to break the franchise out of this goody-two-shoes feel. It's my view that children are violent, dirty, corrupt anarchists; just adults-in-waiting basically." Mike Newell (on making the fourth “Harry Potter” movie) Recently, Newell helmed the feature adaption of a 1985 novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, "Love in the Time of Cholera" (2007), starring Javier Bardem and Benjamin Bratt. He is currently filming "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," a film based on the 2003 video game that stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina. He will also direct a film version of Terry Brooks' epic fantasy novel, "The Elfstones of Shannara," which he is also producing. Additionally, Newell will produce a dramatic film helmed by Johnny Campbell, "Mrs. Darwin," which reportedly will star Rosamund Pike and Joseph Fiennes.
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