Topic: Richard Curtis

Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE (born 8 November 1956) is a BAFTA, Primetime Emmy winning and Oscar nominated English screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, The Boat That Rocked and Love Actually, as well as the hit sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. He is also the founder of the British charity Comic Relief.

Curtis was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Glyness S. and Anthony J. Curtis, who was an executive at Unilever. Curtis and his family lived in several different countries during his childhood, including Sweden and the Philippines. Part of the family still lives in Sydney, Australia. Curtis has lived in England since he was 11. He began school at Papplewick School, Ascot (as did his younger brother; Jamie), before he won a scholarship to Harrow, where he was head of school. He achieved a first-class degree in English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and it was at Oxford that he met, and began working with, Rowan Atkinson.

Curtis was the co-writer with Philip Pope of the Hee Bee Gee Bees' single "Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices)" released in 1980 to parody the style of a series of Bee Gees disco hits. He then began to write comedy for film and TV. He was a regular writer on the TV series Not the Nine O'Clock News, where he wrote many of the show's songs with Howard Goodall and many sketches, often with Rowan Atkinson. First with Atkinson, and later with Ben Elton, Curtis then wrote the Blackadder series from 1983 to 1989, each season focusing upon a different era in British history. Atkinson played the lead throughout, but Curtis remains the only person to have been a writer for every episode of Blackadder. The pair continued their collaboration with the comedy series Mr. Bean. which ran from 1990-1995.