Stephen Frears

Stephen Frears
Frears in July 2014
Born	Stephen Arthur Frears (1941-06-20) 20 June 1941 (age 75) Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1968–present
Notable work	My Beautiful Laundrette Dangerous Liaisons High Fidelity The Queen Philomena
Spouse(s)	Mary-Kay Wilmers (1968–?) Anne Rothenstein (1992–present)
Children	4

Stephen Arthur Frears (born 20 June 1941) is an English film director. Frears has directed British films since the 1980s including My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen and Philomena. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Director for The Grifters and The Queen.

Frears was born in Leicester, England. His father, Russell E. Frears, was a general practitioner and accountant, and his mother, Ruth M. (née Danziger), was a social worker. Frears was brought up Anglican, and did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s. Frears was educated at Gresham's School from 1954 to 1959, and later went on to study law at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1960 to 1963.

After graduating from Cambridge, Frears worked as an assistant director on the films Morgan! and if..... He spent most of his early directing career in television mainly for the BBC, but also for the commercial sector. Frears contributed to several high-profile anthology series such as the BBC's Play for Today, and produced a series of Alan Bennett's plays for LWT, taking responsibility for working in the gallery on The Old Crowd while Lindsay Anderson worked with the actors.

In the late 1980s, Frears came to international attention as a director of feature films. His directorial film debut was the detective spoof Gumshoe (1971), but it was his direction of My Beautiful Laundrette that unexpectedly led to wider notice. The interracial romance, based on a Hanif Kureishi screenplay and shot on 16 mm film, was released theatrically in 1985 to great acclaim, and received an Academy Award nomination and two nominations for BAFTA Awards: it is known as the film that helped launch both Frears and actor Daniel Day Lewis. In 1987, Frears worked with Adrian Edmondson on Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, for a 45-minute programme by cult ensemble The Comic Strip Presents. In 1985, Frears also directed a Comic Strip parody of Rebecca.