Richard Eyre

Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CH CBE (born 28 March 1943) is an English film, theatre, television and opera director. Eyre has received numerous accolades including three Laurence Olivier Awards as well as nominations for six BAFTA Awards and two Tony Awards. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992 News Year Honours, and knighted in the 1997 New Year Honours.

Eyre started his career as the associate director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh from 1967 to 1972 before becoming the artistic director of the Royal National Theatre from 1987 to 1999. He has directed numerous West End productions earning three Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Director for Guys and Dolls (1982), King Lear (1998), and Hedda Gabler (2006). He was also Olivier-nominated for Racing Demon (1989), Skylight (1995), John Gabriel Borkman (1997), Vincent in Brixton (2003), Mary Poppins (2005), and Ghosts (2014). For his work on Broadway he received Tony Award for Best Director nominations for The Judas Kiss (1998) and The Crucible (2002).

He made his directorial film debut with The Ploughman's Lunch (1983). He went on to direct the dramas Iris (2001) and Notes on a Scandal (2005) earning nominations for the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film. On television directed and produced numerous episodes of Play for Today (1979–1981). He also directed The Cherry Orchard (1981), Tumbledown (1988), The Dresser (2015), and King Lear (2018).

Eyre was born in Barnstaple, Devon, England, the son of Richard Galfridus Hastings Giles Eyre and his wife, Minna Mary Jessica Royds.

He was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in northwest Dorset in southwest England, followed by Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge. Eyre became the first president of Rose Bruford College in July 2010. He gives "President's Lectures" at this drama school; his 2012 talk was entitled "Directing Shakespeare for BBC Television". He lives in Brook Green, West London.

Eyre was Associate Director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh from 1967 to 1972. He won STV Awards for the Best Production in Scotland in 1969, 1970 and 1971. His productions at the Lyceum included Jack Ronder's adaptation of James Hogg's novel, Confessions of a Justified Sinner in August 1971. He was artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse from 1973–78 where he commissioned and directed many new plays, including the Trevor Griffiths play Comedians starring Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Rea, and Tom Wilkinson which was first performed in 1975.

Eyre worked as both a director and one of the producers of BBC's Play for Today between 1978 and 1980. He directed The Ploughman's Lunch (written by Ian McEwan) in 1983, which won the Evening Standard Award for Best Film. He returned to the BBC in 1988 to direct the Falklands War story Tumbledown (starring Colin Firth), which won him the BAFTA Award for Best Director and the Prix Italia. He has been the recipient of numerous directing awards including five Olivier Awards. In 1982 he won the Evening Standard Award for Best Director, for Guys and Dolls, and in 1997 for King Lear and Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love. In 1997 he won an Olivier Lifetime Achievement Award, and awards from The Directors' Guild of Great Britain, the South Bank Show, the Evening Standard and the Critics' Circle.

Eyre was artistic director of the UK's National Theatre (which gained the now little-used prefix Royal as outgoing director Peter Hall handed over to him) between 1987 and 1997. He had previously directed a well received revival of Guys and Dolls for the venue in 1982, with Olivier Award-winner Julia McKenzie and Bob Hoskins. He repeated this production in 1996 with Imelda Staunton and Joanna Riding. His diaries from his time at the National have been published as National Service, winning the 2003 Theatre Book Prize.