David Lean
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Sir David Lean CBE |
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|---|---|
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| Born |
25 March 1908 Croydon, Surrey, England |
| Died | 16 April 1991 (aged 83) Limehouse, London, England |
| Occupation | Film director, film producer, screenwriter, film editor |
| Years active | 1942–1991 |
| Spouse(s) | Isabel Lean (1930–1936; divorced) Kay Walsh (1940–1949; divorced) Ann Todd (1949–1957; divorced) Leila Matkar (1960–1978; divorced) Sandra Hotz (1981–1984; divorced) Sandra Cooke (1990–1991; his death) |
| Children | 1 |
Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, responsible for large-scale epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He also directed adaptations of Dickens novels Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Lauded by directors such as Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound "Directors' Top Directors" poll in 2002. Nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, he has three films in the top five of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films and was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990.
Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. A more formative event for his career than his formal education was an uncle's gift, when Lean was aged ten, of a Brownie box camera. "You usually didn't give a boy a camera until he was 16 or 17 in those days. It was a huge compliment and I succeeded at it.' Lean printed and developed his films, and it was his 'great hobby'. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and Lean would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.
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