Charles Sturridge

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Charles Sturridge (born June 24, 1951) is an English television and movie director.

Born in London and educated at Stonyhurst College, he directed TV's Coronation Street (1972) by his early twenties and gained international recognition for his work on the much-praised, eleven part television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1981). Sturridge has continued to produce notable work for television, including the critically-acclaimed mini-series, Gulliver's Travels (1996), and the BAFTA-winning telepic, Shackleton (2002).

Sturridge has made a number of assured forays into feature films, including Stephen Poliakoff's Runners (1983), and the lyrically sculpted black-and-white segment, "La Forza del Destino" from Aria (1986). With a particular affinity for handsomely executed period films and rich literary adaptations, he filmed another Evelyn Waugh novel, A Handful of Dust (1988) and the lushly beautiful and brilliantly acted film version of E. M. Forster's first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1992). He was the director of the critically acclaimed drama A Foreign Field (1993), and a film based on the "Cottingley Fairies" controversy, Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997). Most recently, he directed a remake of the children's classic, Lassie (2005), and he has been signed to write and direct the film adaptation of the Libba Bray novel, A Great and Terrible Beauty, which is scheduled for release in 2008.

Sturridge also had a brief acting career, portraying the young Edward VII in some episodes of the ATV serial Edward the Seventh (aka Edward the King) (1975). Sturridge has been married to actress Phoebe Nicholls, whom he directed in Brideshead Revisited, since 1985, and they have three children. Their eldest child, Tom Sturridge, is also an actor.