Richard Curtis

The Screenwriter Who Invented London

Richard Curtis was born in New Zealand in 1956. His childhood was a constant back and forth between different countries because of his father's job at a multinational company, but he eventually ended up at Oxford studying English language and literature. It was there that he met Rowan Atkinson.

That encounter changed British comedy. Curtis started out writing sketches for university magazines and soon moved into television with Not the Nine O’Clock News. His style was already taking shape. It was a mix of British bite and a tenderness that sometimes bordered on schmaltz but was always saved by wit.

Television gave her the craft.

In the 1980s, he wrote Blackadder with Ben Elton. That series, about a cynical aristocrat moving through English history, allowed him to refine rapid-fire dialogue and sharp comebacks. Curtis learned that a well-placed insult was worth more than ten minutes of convoluted plot.

The Business of Emotions

Curtis wrote the screenplay for Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 after attending dozens of real weddings where he always felt like the clumsiest guy in the room. The film cost less than £3 million and ended up grossing $244 million worldwide. It broke every forecast of the British film industry at the time.

And the gamble paid off.

From then on, the screenwriter specialized in a very particular kind of film. His stories tend to take place in London neighborhoods that look like they came straight out of a home decor catalog. In 1999, he released Notting Hill with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. The film set an aesthetic and a tone that Curtis would repeat endlessly. Clumsy characters, eccentric friends and declarations of love in the rain.

In 2001, he adapted Bridget Jones's Diary. The writing process was complicated because Curtis had to filter Helen Fielding's humor so it would work on the big screen. But the result was a box office hit that saved Working Title Films for several fiscal years.

The Director's Chair and Partial Retirement

Curtis decided to direct his own script in 2003 with Love Actually. The film weaves ten different stories together in pre-Christmas London. Although critics were divided between those who loved it and those who hated it, the movie became a must-see annual holiday tradition for millions of moviegoers.

But directing wore him out too much.

In 2009, he shot Bridget Jones's Diary, and in 2013, About Time. The latter mixed time travel with family drama and marked his official farewell to directing feature films. Curtis said he preferred to spend more time with his family and focus on pure writing or his humanitarian work.

Because his other great passion has always been charity. In 1985, he co-founded Comic Relief with Jane Tewson. Since then, he has used his influence to raise more than £1,000 million for anti-poverty projects in Africa and the United Kingdom.

In 2019, he wrote the screenplay for Yesterday under the direction of Danny Boyle. The premise was simple: a world where nobody remembers the Beatles except one struggling musician. In 2023, he returned to Christmas comedy with the screenplay for Genie, a production released directly to digital platforms.

In 2024, Curtis served as executive producer of the animated film That Christmas for Netflix.