Paul Greengrass

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Paul Greengrass
Born	August 13, 1955 (1955-08-13) (age 52) Cheam, Surrey, England, United Kingdom
Awards won BAFTA Awards Best Single Drama 2000 The Murder of Stephen Lawrence 2005 Omagh Best Director 2006 United 93 Irish Film and Television Awards Best Director of a Feature Film 2002 Bloody Sunday Best Script (Film & Television) 2002 Bloody Sunday Other Awards Golden Berlin Bear 2002 Bloody Sunday

Paul Greengrass (b. August 13, 1955 in Cheam, Surrey) is an Academy Award-nominated, BAFTA Award-winning English writer and film director. He specialises in dramatisations of real-life events and is known for his signature use of hand-held cameras.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Filmography 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

Greengrass was educated at Sevenoaks School and Queens' College, Cambridge University. He first worked as a director in the 1980s, for the ITV current affairs programme World in Action. At the same time he co-authored the notorious book Spycatcher with Peter Wright, former assistant director of MI5, which contained enough sensitive information that the British Government attempted (unsuccessfully) to ban it.^[1]

He then moved into drama, directing made-for-television films such as The One That Got Away, based on Chris Ryan's book about SAS actions in the Gulf War, and The Fix, a fictional story of corruption in football.

His 1998 film The Theory of Flight starred Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, who played a woman with motor neurone disease. The film dealt with the difficult issue of the sexuality of people with disabilities.

Greengrass co-wrote the screenplay for Omagh, which depicted the 1998 bombing of Omagh, and directed The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999), which told the story of Stephen Lawrence, a black youth whose murder was not properly investigated by the Metropolitan Police and his mother's investigations, which led to revelations about institutional racism in the police.

Bloody Sunday (2002), depicted the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings of Northern Irish anti-internment activists by British soldiers in an almost documentary style; it shared First Prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival with Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

Based on that film, Greengrass was hired to direct 2004's The Bourne Supremacy, a sequel to the 2002 film The Bourne Identity, after the first film's director, Doug Liman left the project. The film starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac who realizes he was once a top CIA assassin and is now being pursued by his former employers. It proved to be an unexpectedly enormous financial and critical success, and secured Greengrass's reputation and ability to get his smaller, more personal films made.

In 2006, Greengrass directed United 93, a film based on the September 11th hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93. The film received immense critical acclaim, particularly for Greengrass' again quasi-documentary-style directing. After receiving many Best Director awards and nominations from critics circles (including the Broadcast Film Critics Association), Greengrass won the BAFTA award for Best Director at the 60th British Academy Film Awards and received an Oscar nomination for Achievement in Directing at the 79th Academy Awards. For his role in writing the film, he earned Writers Guild of America Award and BAFTA nominations for Best Original Screenplay.

He followed this with a return to the Bourne franchise. The Bourne Ultimatum, released in 2007, was an even bigger success than the previous two films and provided him with yet another BAFTA nomination for Best Director at the 61st British Academy Film Awards.

He is currently directing Green Zone, a film of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the bestselling, award-winning book by the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It details the mistakes made in post-war Iraq. It is filming in Spain and Morocco with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear.^[2]

Greengrass was initially attached to direct Watchmen, but the production was shut down a few weeks before filming was due to start and the Watchmen film was directed by Zack Snyder instead.

Greengrass's future plans include directing They Marched into Sunlight, a book by David Maraniss which revolves around the controversy surrounding the Vietnam conflict, focusing on one day, when a major battle was occurring in Vietnam and a major protest was simultaneously happening in the US. Greengrass is also slated to direct a fourth Bourne film alongside star Matt Damon, although a release date has yet to be announced. ^[3]

[edit] Filmography

• Resurrected (1989)
• The One That Got Away (1996)
• The Theory of Flight (1998)
• The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999)
• Bloody Sunday (2002)
• The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
• United 93 (2006)
• The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
• Green Zone (2009)

[edit] References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

1. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (2007). "Hollywood's Favourite Brit", The Guardian August 5, 2007. Online version retrieved April 22, 2008.
2. ^ Diane Garrett. "Damon, Greengrass re-teaming", Variety, 2007-06-06. Retrieved on 2008-01-22. 
3. ^ Universal's re-born identity

[edit] External links

• Paul Greengrass at the Internet Movie Database

v • d • e Theatrical Feature Films directed by Paul Greengrass Resurrected (1989) • The Theory of Flight (1998) • Bloody Sunday (2002) • The Bourne Supremacy (2004) • United 93 (2006) • The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) • Green Zone (TBA)