Stephen Daldry

Stephen Daldry, CBE (Stephen David Daldry, born 2 May 1960) is a theatre and film director and producer]. He directed Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002),The Reader (2008) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), all of which have been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture or Best Director.

Early years

Daldry was born in Dorset. The family later moved to Taunton, Somerset and Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton, and also performed as Sandy Tyrell in Hayfever for local amateur society Taunton Thespians and then aged 18 won a Royal Air Force scholarship to University of Sheffield to study English, where he became chairman of SuTCo (Sheffield University Theatre Company).

After graduation, he spent a year travelling through Italy, where he became a clown's apprentice. Returning to Sheffield, he became an apprentice at the Crucible Theatre from 1985-1988. He then trained as an actor at East 15 Acting School, London.

Career

Daldry began his career at the Sheffield Crucible with Artistic Director Clare Venables where he directed many productions. He also headed many productions at the Manchester Library Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse, Stratford East, Oxford Stage, Brighton and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was also Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre from 1992-8, where he headed the £26 million development scheme. He was also Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre, London (1989–92) and the Metro Theatre Company (1984-6). He is currently on the Board of the Young and Old Vic Theatres and remains an Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre. He was the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre for 2002 at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He won awards on Broadway as well as the West End.

Daldry made his feature film directorial debut in 2000 with Billy Elliot. His next film was The Hours, and it won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Nicole Kidman. Recently, he directed a stage musical adaptation of Billy Elliot, and in 2009 his work on it earned him a Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical. He has also made a film version of The Reader, based on the book of the same name and starring Kate Winslet, David Kross, and Ralph Fiennes. Again, it won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Kate Winslet. He has received an Academy Award nomination for directing each of his three films.

Daldry was planning to direct a film adaptation of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay in 2005. In the ensuing three years, the project was cancelled and reinitiated several times, and in late 2006 was partially cast with Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire. According to Chabon, production then stalled due to "studio-politics kinds of reasons that I'm not privy to," and as of April 2007 remains inactive. The director will soon be working on the broadway musical version of Dumbo, with Disney Theatricals. The musical is to début on Broadway in 2012.

Daldry's fourth film was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, an adaptation of the book of the same name written by Jonathan Safran Foer, starring newcomer Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Max Von Sydow. The screenplay was written by Eric Roth. The film received a nomination for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards and a nomination for Von Sydow for Best Supporting Actor.

Personal life

Although Daldry has been married since 2001 to American performance artist and magazine editor Lucy Sexton, with whom he has a daughter, Annabel Clare (born 2003), he describes himself simply as a gay man because people prefer it ("they don't like the confusion").

He was previously in a relationship with set designer Ian MacNeil for 13 years. They met at an outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland in Lancaster in 1988, and after settling in a bedsit in Camberwell, began collaborating on theatrical productions.