Richard Eyre

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

Eyre was born in in Barnstaple, Devon and educated at Sherborne School and Peterhouse, Cambridge.

He 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". He then worked as both a director and one of the producers of BBC's Play for Today between 1978 and 1980. 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. 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; King Lear with Ian Holm, Tennessee Williams' "Night of the Iguana" and "Sweet Bird of Youth", "John Gabriel Borkman" with Paul Scofield, Vaness 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. He returned to the BBC in 1988 to direct the Falklands War story Tumbledown (starring Colin Firth), which won the BAFTA Award for Best Director. Eyre served as a Governor of the BBC between 1995 and 2003.

He wrote adaptations of "Hedda Gabler" and of Sartre's "Les Mains Sales" as "The Novice" for the Almeida Theatre.

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), Stage Beauty, and, most recently, Notes on a Scandal, the film adaptation of the Booker Prize-nominated novel by Zoe Heller.

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

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.

[edit] 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".

He was made a CBE in 1992, and knighted on 4 March 1997. He was made an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998.