Stephen Frears was born in Leicester, England on 20 June 1941, the son of a doctor and a social worker. Leicester, with its dispiriting mono "Semper eadem" ("Always the same"), he found stultifyingly dull, and he was delighted when in 1953 the family moved to Nottingham, "a sexier town than anything l had ever known". He became an avid theatregoer, and at Cambridge devoted far more energy to theatre directing than to his law studies.
After graduating in 1963 he applied for a traineeship at Granada Television but was turned down. He was also turned down by the BBC. This double rejection "turned out to be a stroke of good fortune, because I found a more interesting path through the woods". On holiday in Majorca he met director Lindsay Anderson, who invited Frears to become his assistant at the Royal Court Theatre. Frears also worked there with Karel Reisz and began his career in films as "vaguely an assistant" to Reisz on Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), to Anderson on If... (1968), and to Albert Finney on his sole directing venture, Charlie Bubbles (1968). By way of a quid pro quo, Finney took the lead in Frears' own first feature, Gumshoe (1972).
Having directed a series of children's dramas for Yorkshire TV, he joined the BBC in 1972. For the next 12 years he worked for the BBC, LWT and Thames on some of the finest television dramas of the period. He soon gained a reputation for efficiency, bringing projects in on time and within budget, and for scrupulous and sensitive handling of scripts. "After a time," Frears commented in 1978, "it's possible to work within the confines of the television companies and still try to discover your own voice."
His breakthrough came with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). The unexpected success of My Beautiful Laundrette enabled Frears to retrieve an earlier project he'd had to shelve: Prick Up Your Ears (1987), a biopic of the gay playwright Joe Orcon, scripted by Alan Bennett from John Lahr's biography." Ostensibly a study of a tormented relationship, the film became an oblique satire on British hypocrisy. Nothing oblique about Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1988). Right from the start the film, again written By Kureishi, announced itself as an all-out assault on Thatcher and everything she stood for. Frears' collaborative, undogmatic style of filmmaking encourages writers and actors alike or brings him their pet projects.
- Philip Kemp
