Antonia Bird

Antonia Bird
Born	1959 London England
Occupation	director
Years active	1985 - present

Antonia Bird (born 1959) is an English television drama and feature film director.

Life and career

Bird was born in London. She began her career at the Royal Court Theatre before moving to television in the mid-1980s, directing episodes of EastEnders (1985–1986), Casualty (1986–1987), and drama serials like Thin Air (1988) and The Men's Room (1991). In 1993, Antonia Bird won a Best First Feature award at the Edinburgh International Television Festival and a BAFTA award for the Best Single Drama for Safe. Her first cinema release came with Priest (1994), which was criticized by the Catholic Church.

Bird later directed several films, including Mad Love (1995), Face (1997), Ravenous (1999), and Care (2000).

While noted for her realistic, socially-aware films (she is a great admirer of Ken Loach), Bird's largest-scale movie to date is 1999's Ravenous. Starring her frequent collaborator Robert Carlyle, the film started shooting with another director, Milcho Manchevski. When Manchevski suddenly left the production, and was replaced by another director who also left early, Carlyle requested that Bird be hired to get the film made.

Filmography

Television

• EastEnders (1985–1986)
• Casualty (1986–1987)
• Thin Air (1988)
• The Men's Room (1991)
• Care (2000) TV Movie
• Rehab (2003) TV Movie
• The Hamburg Cell (2004) TV Movie
• Spooks (2005)
• Cracker (2006)
• Off by Heart (2009) (TV documentary)
• A Passionate Woman (2010)

Film

• Priest (1994)
• Mad Love (1995)
• Face (1997)
• Ravenous (1999)
• Cross My Mind (2012) (pre-production)

External links

• Antonia Bird at the Internet Movie Database
• Antonia Bird biography and filmography at the British Film Institute's Screenonline