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‘British successes like The Queen are freaks’

Clemency Burton-Hill

Wednesday, 18th July 2007

Clemency Burton-Hill talks to the British director Stephen Frears and hears his strong views on the film industry in this country which, he says, barely exists now

For somebody so revered in Hollywood, there is something rather deliciously, grottily British about Stephen Frears. A remarkably prolific director for both television and cinema, in the last four years alone he has managed to produce three films that have all scooped major prizes: Dirty Pretty Things, Mrs Henderson Presents and The Queen.

He has directed six women to Best Actress Oscars, himself been nominated for Best Director twice, and has won or been nominated for a further 65 international awards. But here he is, standing on a street corner in Soho dressed in a scruffy T-shirt and trousers, puffing on a roll-up and grumbling about the UK’s newly imposed smoking ban.

Were it not for the fact that we have just emerged from an editing suite upstairs, where I have seen what can only be described as a master at work, I would have walked past without noticing him — as indeed, hordes do during the course of his precious cigarette.

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