Newell, Mike

   b. 1942

   Film-maker

   Mike Newell is a film director whose first major film, The Awakening (1980), was a horror story loosely based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of the Seven Stars. His Dance with a Stranger (1985), based on the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, helped form his reputation. The Good Father (1987) starred Anthony Hopkins as a man coming to terms with a post-feminist landscape, while Soursweet (1989) concerned a Chinese family adapting to cultural and economic life in London. Following Enchanted April (1991), a comedy of manners originally made for BBC, was the Irish-set ‘western’ Into the West (1992). His most successful film to date is Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), which starred Hugh Grant.

   GUY OSBORN