Stephen Frears

Director

“When you’re starting, what you chiefly have is energy and passion and that will go a long way to cover a certain amount of funkiness in how you tell a story. But you’re never going to make a film late in your career the way you made it at the beginning and to try to is insane.”

Biography

Frears was born in Leicester, England to an Anglican father and a Jewish mother. Attended the Trinity College in Cambridge before starting his carreer in television where he contributed to several high-profile series such as the BBC’s Play for Today. In the mid-1980s he came to prominence as an important director of British and later American films. It was his production of the one-off drama My Beautiful Laundrette for Channel 4 in 1985 that led to his notice as a capable film director when the production was released theatrically to great acclaim. He next directed another successful British film, the Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears in 1987, followed by a second film from a Hanif Kureshi screen play, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. The following year he made his Hollywood debut with Dangerous Liaisons. Frears had another critical success with The Grifters, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director but suffered a major box office disappointment with Hero, starring… read more

Films on MUBI

Stephen Frears

Director

“When you’re starting, what you chiefly have is energy and passion and that will go a long way to cover a certain amount of funkiness in how you tell a story. But you’re never going to make a film late in your career the way you made it at the beginning and to try to is insane.”

Biography

Films on MUBI

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