Rowan Atkinson considers that playing Mr. Bean is something “stressful and exhausting” and has ensured that he will never play this role again. The 65-year-old actor is working on an animated movie of the popular character but doesn’t seem to enjoy it. “The weight of responsibility is not pleasant. I dont enjoy”. Atkinson played this role on the hit series from 1990 to 1995, before taking on the movies. Bean Movie in 1997 and Mr. Bean’s Holiday in 2007. “Mr. Bean has gotten a bit predictable. In the end I always know how he’s going to behave, ”says Atkinson. “He is a 10-year-old boy imprisoned in the body of a man; it may grow, but I think it would be a shame. He claims that he has no doubling problem with Mr. Bean, a la Jekyll and Hyde. “I plug it in and unplug it when I want to, and I put it down and go home. It is true that sometimes Mr. Bean has behaviors with which I feel identified, but that happens to many people. There are even those who wish they could act as expeditiously as him ”.
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born on January 6, 1955 in the city of Consett, United Kingdom. He was the youngest of the four children of Eric and Ella May Atkinson and raised in Anglican Christianity. As a child he was considered the class clown but as he grew up he became aware of the situation and became a calmer and more reserved young man. Rowan graduated from Newcastle University with a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and began a Master’s degree in the same subject at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where he has been an honorary member since 2006. At Durham Choristers School, he was a classmate of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. For many years he has maintained a cordial relationship with the members of the British royal family who granted him the Order of the British Empire in 2013, but he also has a more personal relationship with Charles of England, who declares himself to be his admirer. That is why it has been present at some of the most important events of the British royal family such as the weddings of Prince Charles and Camilla and those of the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex. Rowan Atkinson married a BBC makeup artist in 1990, with whom he had two children, Lily and Benjamin. On his first date with Sastry, Atkinson revealed that he did not say anything to him throughout the dinner except to pass him the ketchup. They divorced in 2015. Since 2017 he has been with actress Louise Fordac, with whom he had a daughter. His extensive career in film, television and theater over 40 years has allowed him to accumulate a small fortune that is currently valued at around 150 million.
Recognized among global audiences as the embodiment of the clumsy and hilarious, Rowan Atkinson is such a fan of James Bond that he landed a small supporting role in the 1983 film. Never say neverstarring Sean Connery.
His career has not been without controversy. He has even campaigned for the right to swear in the past, but not everyone in the UK shares Mr. Bean’s vision of no-holds-barred humor. One of the sketch by actor Rowan Atkinson, aired on BBC 1, cost the British public broadcaster more than 3,000 complaints and an investigation by Ofcom, the UK communication regulator. In principle it was a video with good intentions. Mr. Bean wanted to raise money for underprivileged children in an annual program that the BBC has organized for 25 years together with the NGO Comic Relief. The purpose of this program was to get famous people to do “funny things” that would convince the public to give money. Atkinson disguised himself as the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, known for supporting the conservative wing of Anglicans. He began by caricaturing the archbishop as homophobic: “When I was a young man, if I may emphasize something, a young straight man with some girlfriends, fundraising was not as fun as it is now …”. Welby was known for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
But it has not been the only controversy that has starred. In 2018, Atkinson defended comments made by Boris Johnson about wearing the burqa. The comedian wrote to The Times stating that “as a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to make jokes about religion, I think Boris Johnson’s joke about burqa wearers resembling mailboxes is pretty good.”
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