Lenny Abrahamson

Lenny Abrahamson
Born Leonard Abrahamson
(1966-01-26) 26 January 1966[1][2]
Dublin, Ireland
Occupation Film director, screenwriter
Years active 1991–present
Spouse(s) Monika Pamula (2 children)

Leonard "Lenny" Abrahamson (born 30 November 1966[1][2]) is an Irish film and television director. Abrahamson is known for his films Adam & Paul (2004), Garage (2007), What Richard Did (2012), Frank (2014) and the Oscar-winning Room (2015).

Early life

Abrahamson was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Edna (nėe Walzman) and Max Abrahamson, a solicitor.[3] He was raised Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.[4] Both sides of his family were originally from Eastern Europe, including Poland.[5]

He studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he was elected a scholar in Mental and Moral Science (philosophy) in 1988, having first completed an MA in Theoretical Physics in 1987.[6]

Career

Abrahamson was offered a scholarship to study for a PhD in Philosophy in Stanford University. He did not complete his studies and returned to Ireland to take up filmmaking, initially directing commercials, filming a popular series of adverts for Carlsberg.[7] His first film was Adam & Paul, a black comedy that featured a pair of heroin addicts as they made their way around Dublin in search of a fix. The follow up film to this was 2007's Garage, starring Pat Shortt as a lonely petrol station attendant in rural Ireland. Both films won the IFTA award for best film.

Also in 2007, RTÉ screened Abrahamson's four-part TV miniseries Prosperity, which was written in collaboration with Mark O'Halloran, the co-writer of Adam and Paul and Garage. Like these two films, Prosperity focused on people on the fringes of Irish society, with each one-hour episode focusing on a specific character, including an alcoholic, a single mother, and an asylum seeker. Prosperity was nominated for six Irish Film and Television Awards in 2008 and won in two categories, Best Directing for Lenny Abrahamson, and Best Script for Mark O'Halloran.[8]

In 2012, he won his third IFTA for best film with What Richard Did.

On December 2012, in an interview with Eurochannel, Abrahamson announced that he was working on a UK film called Frank which is set in Britain, Ireland and the USA. "It's a comedy about a young musician who joins an eccentric band led by an enigmatic singer called Frank. It's a kind of road movie, strange, funny and quite original, I hope. It stars Michael Fassbender and Domhnall Gleeson."[9]

Abrahamson directed the film Frank, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2014. The film is about an eccentric musician modeled after Frank Sidebottom.[10] It stars Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Maggie Gyllenhaal. He next directed the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel, Room (2015), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.[11] The film was successful, both critically and commercially.[12][13]

In 2014, it was announced that Abrahamson would direct an adaptation of Laird Hunt's Civil War novel Neverhome.[14] In 2015, Abrahamson was working on a film based on Emile Griffith's boxing rivalry with Benny Paret.[15]

In 2016, it was confirmed that Abrahamson is attached to direct Neal Bascomb's upcoming book The Grand Escape, a true story of three daredevil World War I pilots being held in Germany's most infamous POW prison. The story chronicles WWI's greatest mass prison escape, and the pilots' subsequent flight to freedom. A writer to adapt Bascomb's book has not yet been attached.[16] Element Pictures and Film4 Productions are producing.[17]

Personal life

Abrahamson is married to Monika Pamula, a Polish-born film studies teacher; the couple has two children.[18][19]

Filmography

Feature films

TV series

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

Irish Film & Television Awards

Cannes Film Festival

Satellite Awards

References

  1. 1 2 "Lenny Abrahamson". AlloCiné. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  2. 1 2 "Lenny Abrahamson - Overview". AllMovie. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  3. ↑ Max Abrahamson profile, lawsociety.ie; accessed 7 March 2016.
  4. ↑ Curt Schleier (14 August 2014). "Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland's 'Third Most Famous Jew'". Forward.com. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  5. ↑ "Lenny Abrahamson". Independent.ie. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  6. ↑ "List of Scholars". Scholars' Website (TCD). Trinity College, Dublin. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  7. ↑ Ryan Gilbey (3 January 2013). "Lenny Abrahamson: 'Good guys can be complex, too'". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  8. ↑ Eurochannel. "Prosperity - Lenny Abrahamson - Gary Egan - Ireland - Eurochannel". Eurochannel: The European TV channel - European movies, TV series and music. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  9. ↑ Eurochannel. "Interview - Lenny Abrahamson - Eurochannel". Eurochannel: The European TV channel - European movies, TV series and music. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  10. ↑ Michael Rosser (10 January 2013). "First photo of Gyllenhaal, Fassbender and Gleeson in Frank". Screen Daily. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  11. ↑ Andreas Wiseman (3 September 2013). "Lenny Abrahamson to direct Room adaptation". Screen Daily. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  12. ↑ "Reviews of Room". metacritic.com. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  13. ↑ Niall Murphy (18 May 2015). "Irish Abroad: International rights sell out for Lenny Abrahamson's Room". Scannain. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  14. ↑ Niall Murphy (24 September 2014). "Irish Film: Lenny Abrahamson to adapt Laird Hunt's Neverhome". Scannain. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  15. ↑ Jarlath Regan (7 March 2016). "Lenny Abrahamson". An Irishman Abroad (Podcast) (129 ed.). SoundCloud.com. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  16. ↑ "'Room' Helmer Lenny Abrahamson to Direct Adaptation of 'The Grand Escape' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2016-03-30.
  17. ↑ Niall Murphy (30 March 2016). "Irish Film: Lenny Abrahamson to direct The Grand Escape for Element Pictures and Film4". Scannain. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
  18. ↑ Aine McMahon. "Oscars: 'You have to mark an event like this', Lenny Abrahamson says". Irishtimes.com. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  19. ↑ Staff. "Interview: Lenny Abrahamson". Shaqsy.com. Retrieved 15 January 2016.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.