“The
films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on
forgiveness.” – Peter Morgan
Born on this date in 1963, Morgan is a British
film writer and playwright best known for writing the historical films and
plays The Queen and Frost/Nixon, and for creating Netflix’s wildly successful drama series
The Crown. He also co-wrote the
screenplay for the multi-award winning movie The Last King of Scotland. In
2008, Morgan was ranked number 28 on "The 100 most powerful people in
British culture" list.
The son of immigrants who fled to Great Britain
to escape the Nazis (his father) and Soviet repression (his mother), he started
writing while in college at the University of Leeds and had modest success with
his early work until his big breakthrough with The Queen, for which he won a Golden Globe and lead actor Helen
Mirren an Academy Award. Since then,
everything he’s written has been successful and influential. In 2016 he was honored as Commander of the Order of the
British Empire (CBE) for services to drama, and in 2017, he was awarded the
prestigious British Film Institute Fellowship.
His advice to writers is to think
about the audience, especially writing for the stage. “As a dramatist, you
have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if
you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character
in a way that suits you. It rings false immediately. People can sense when
you're being cynical or schematic.”
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