For other uses, see Alan Parker (disambiguation).
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Source: Wikipedia

For other uses, see Alan Parker (disambiguation).

Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer and screenwriter. The early part of his career, beginning in his late teens, was spent as a copywriter and director of television commercials. After about 10 years doing commercials, many of which won awards for creativity, he began screenwriting and directing films.
Parker was notable early on for making films in a wide range of genres, often intentionally doing a film very different than his previous one in order to remain "creatively fresher." Actor Colm Meaney says that "it's the variety of his work that sort of staggers me." Among the different genres Parker has directed have been musicals, including Bugsy Malone (1976), Fame (1980), Pink Floyd—The Wall (1982), The Commitments (1991), and Evita (1996); true-story dramas, including Midnight Express (1978), Mississippi Burning (1988), Come See the Paradise (1990), and Angela's Ashes (1999); and melodramas, including Shoot the Moon (1982), Angel Heart (1987), and The Life of David Gale (2003).
"It is important for movies to have a message, without which there is little point in making a film," Parker states. British film critic Geoff Andrew states that Parker "is a natural storyteller adept at getting messages across by forthright methods: dramatic lighting, vivid characterisation, scenes of violent conflict regularly interrupting sequences of expository dialogue, and an abiding sympathy for the underdog."
His films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Academy Awards. Parker was awarded the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the British film industry, and has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema, along with being a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain and lecturing at various film schools. In 2013 he received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, the highest honour the British Film Academy can give a filmmaker.

Early years [edit]
Parker was born into a working class family in Islington, North London, the son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter. He grew up in an Islington housing project and as a result has always been able to relate to average people. According to British novelist and screenwriter Ray Connolly, Parker "remains almost defiantly working-class in attitudes." Parker described his early life in an interview with Connolly:

I've had a lot of fun but I feel as though I'm still up in my bedroom in Islington working for my O-levels [high school examinations] when everybody else is out having a good time.

He feels that he had a "pretty ordinary background," and never had aspirations to be a film director: "No one in my family rally had any aspirations to be involved in anything to do with film." The closest he ever came to doing anything related to movies was learning about photography, a hobby inspired by his uncles: "That early introduction to photography is something I remember."
He attended Dame Alice Owen's School, concentrating on science in his last year. Instead of enrolling in college, he left school when he was eighteen to enter the advertising field, taking a job as an office boy in the mailroom of an advertising agency. He recalls that period:

I didn't go to university, and I really wanted to write, more than anything. I used to write essays and bits and pieces ... I didn't really have any advice on what area I might go into ... in the evenings I used to write ads.

He told Connolly that he was first attracted to the advertising industry after seeing a play about an agency and saw "there were millions of girls in it." Parker was encouraged by others who worked in the agencies to stay with writing:

I ended up getting a job as a copywriter. The great thing about advertising from a British point of view, is that it didn't have a kind of class distinction as other jobs had. If you were half bright, they gave you a chance. I was very fortunate that they gave me that chance.
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