Paul Greengrass

Paul Greengrass (born 13 August 1955) is an English film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist.

Greengrass was born 13 August 1955 in Cheam, Surrey, England.

His mother Joyce Greengrass was a teacher and his father Phillip Greengrass a river pilot and merchant seaman.

His brother Mark Greengrass is a noted English historian.

Greengrass was educated at Westcourt Primary School, Gravesend Grammar School and Sevenoaks School; he attended Queens' College, Cambridge.

He studied English literature at the same time as Roger Michell.

After receiving many Best Director awards and nominations from critics' circles (including the Broadcast Film Critics Association), Greengrass won the BAFTA award for Best Director at the 60th British Academy Film Awards and received an Oscar nomination for Achievement in Directing at the 79th Academy Awards.

For his role in writing the film, he earned the Writers Guild of America Award and a BAFTA nominations for Best Original Screenplay.

He returned to the money-making Bourne franchise.

Greengrass moved into drama, directing non-fiction, made-for-television films such as The One That Got Away, based on Chris Ryan's book about SAS actions in the Gulf War and The Fix, based on the 1964 betting scandal that shook British football.

Greengrass first worked as a director in the 1980s, for the ITV current affairs programme World in Action.

At the same time, he co-authored the infamous book Spycatcher (1987) with Peter Wright, former assistant director of MI5.

It contained enough sensitive information that the British Government made an unsuccessful attempt to ban it.

In the mid 80s, the book was banned because of revealing insights into how the British Secret Service (MI5) operated.

Bloody Sunday was inspired by Don Mullan's politically influential book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday (Wolfhound Press, 1997).

A schoolboy witness of the events of Bloody Sunday, Mullan was co-producer and appeared as a figure in Bloody Sunday.

His 1998 film The Theory of Flight starred Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, who played a woman with motor neurone disease.

The film dealt with the difficult issue of the sexuality of people with disabilities.

Based on the bombing of 1998, the film was a critical success, winning British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama.

This was the first professional film that Greengrass had not directed; he was credited as a writer and producer.

He had been working on The Bourne Supremacy.

The film was directed by Pete Travis.

It was the second film Greengrass had written about terrorism and mass killing in Ireland after Bloody Sunday.

Greengrass directed The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999), an account of Stephen Lawrence, a black youth whose murder was not properly investigated by the Metropolitan Police.

His mother's investigations resulted in accusations about institutional racism in the police.

In 2006, Greengrass directed United 93, a film based on the 11 September 2001 hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93.

The film received critical acclaim, particularly for Greengrass's quasi-documentary-style.

His early film Bloody Sunday (2002), about the 1972 shootings in Derry, Northern Ireland, won the Golden Bear at 52nd Berlin International Film Festival.

Bloody Sunday (2002), depicted the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings of Irish anti-internment activists by British soldiers in an almost documentary style; it shared First Prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival with Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

Other films he has directed include three in the Bourne action/thriller series: The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and Jason Bourne (2016); United 93 (2006), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Director and received an Academy Award for Best Director nomination; Green Zone (2010); and Captain Phillips (2013).

In 2004, he co-wrote and produced the film Omagh, which won the British Academy Television Award.

In 2004, Greengrass co-wrote the television film Omagh with Guy Hibbert.

Based on that film, Greengrass was hired to direct 2004's The Bourne Supremacy, a sequel to the 2002 film The Bourne Identity. The first film's director, Doug Liman, had left the project.

The film starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac who realises he was once a top CIA assassin and is being pursued by his former employers.

An unexpectedly major financial and critical success, it secured Greengrass's reputation and ability to get his smaller, more personal films made.

In 2007, Greengrass co-founded Directors UK, a professional organisation of British filmmakers, and was its first president until 2014.

He ranked 28 on EW's The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood in 2007.

The Bourne Ultimatum, released in 2007, was an even bigger success than the previous two films.

In 2008, The Telegraph named him among the most influential people in British culture.

In 2017, Greengrass was honoured with a British Film Institute Fellowship.