Notes on a Scandal

Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE (born 28 March 1943) is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.

Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge and Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. Eyre became the first President of Rose Bruford College in July 2010. He lives in Brook Green, West London.

Theatre and opera

Eyre was Associate Director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh from 1967 to 1972. He won STV Awards for the Best Production in Scotland in 1969, 1970 and 1971. He was artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse from 1973-78 where he commissioned and directed many new plays, including Trevor Griffith’s Comedians.

Eyre was director of the National Theatre (which became the Royal National Theatre during his time there) between 1987 and 1997, having previously directed a noted revival of Guys and Dolls for the venue in 1982 with Olivier Award-winner Julia McKenzie and Bob Hoskins. He repeated this production in 1996 with Imelda Staunton and Joanna Riding. His diaries during this time have been published as National Service and won the 2003 Theatre Book Prize.

Other than Guys and Dolls, his most noted theatre productions are of Hamlet (twice), with Jonathan Pryce at the Royal Court in 1980 and Daniel Day-Lewis in 1989; Richard III with Ian McKellen; King Lear with Ian Holm; Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana and Sweet Bird of Youth; Eduardo Di Filippo’s Napoli Milionaria and Le Grande Magia; John Gabriel Borkman with Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins; Hedda Gabler with Eve Best, and numerous new plays by David Hare, Tom Stoppard, Trevor Griffiths, Howard Brenton, Alan Bennett, Christopher Hampton and Nicholas Wright.

Eyre has also directed operas. His debut was the 1994 production of La Traviata at the Royal Opera House which starred Angela Gheorghiu and was conducted by Sir Georg Solti. This production was televised and has subsequently been released on video and DVD.

He directed the musical Mary Poppins in London and on Broadway. On 14 February 2007, Eyre’s production of Nicholas Wright’s The Reporter premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London. The play explores the social climate in the years before James Mossman’s death as well as the reasons for the death itself.

Eyre directed a new production of Bizet’s opera Carmen for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009-2010 season, starring Latvian mezzo soprano Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna.

Eyre was planning to direct Jon Robin Baitz’s stage adaptation of Hollywood legend Robert Evans’ memoirs The Kid Stays in the Picture and its sequel, The Fat Lady Sang, but the project was cancelled by the producer.

His production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives starring Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross opened on Broadway in November 2011 following a run in Toronto.

Television

Eyre worked as both a director and one of the producers of BBC’s Play for Today between 1978 and 1980. He returned to the BBC in 1988 to direct the Falklands War story Tumbledown (starring Colin Firth), which won him the BAFTA Award for Best Director and the Prix Italia. Eyre served on the board of Governors of the BBC between 1995 and 2003.

Eyre will direct Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 for BBC2’s Shakespeare Season in 2012.

Film

For film, he directed The Ploughman’s Lunch (written by Ian McEwan) in 1982, which won the Evening Standard Award for Best Film, Iris, a biopic of writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch (starring Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent), and Stage Beauty. Most recently, he directed Notes on a Scandal, the film adaptation of the Man Booker Prize-nominated novel by Zoë Heller, and in 2008, The Other Man, an adaptation of a short story by Bernhard Schlink, starring Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas and Laura Linney.

Writing

Eyre has written adaptations of Hedda Gabler and of Sartre’s Les Mains Sales as The Novice for the Almeida Theatre.

A friend of Ian Charleson, whom he directed in acclaimed performances of Guys and Dolls and Hamlet, Eyre contributed a chapter to the 1990 book, For Ian Charleson: A Tribute.

Awards

He has been the recipient of numerous directing awards including five Olivier Awards. In 1982 he won the Evening Standard Award for Best Director, for Guys and Dolls, and in 1997 for King Lear and Tom Stoppard’s Invention of Love. In 1997 he won an Olivier Lifetime Achievement Award, and awards from The Directors’ Guild of Great Britain, The South Bank Show, The Evening Standard and The Critics’ Circle. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992 New Year Honours, and knighted in the 1997 New Year Honours, receiving the honour on 4 March 1997. He became a Patron of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in 2001. He was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters (honoris causa) by the University of Nottingham on 10 July 2008. —Wikipedia