Stephen Daldry

Stephen David Daldry CBE (born 2 May 1960) is an English director and producer of film, theatre, and television.

He has won three Tony Awards for his work on Broadway and an Olivier Award for his work in the West End.

He then trained as an actor on the postgraduate course at East 15 Acting School from 1982 to 1983, now part of the University of Essex.

The film received a nomination for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards and a nomination for von Sydow for Best Supporting Actor.

Daldry was initially slated to direct a Star Wars spin off film about the iconic Star Wars character Obi-Wan Kenobi but the film was later scrapped due to the commercial failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story with Daldry saying the cancellation of the film crushed him and Hossein Amini.

However, ideas from Daldry's originally planned film were repurposed for the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney + limited series directed by Deborah Chow and released in 2022 for which Daldry received credit as a consulting producer.

In July 2022, it was revealed that Daldry would work with Sonia Friedman to develop a play based on the hit Netflix television show Stranger Things.

The play entitled Stranger Things: The First Shadow premiered in December 2023 at the Phoenix Theatre in London's West End.

Daldry was in a relationship with set designer Ian MacNeil for 13 years.

Daldry began his career as an apprentice at the Sheffield Crucible from 1985 to 1988, working under artistic director Clare Venables.

He also headed productions at the Manchester Library Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse, Stratford East, Oxford Stage, Brighton and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

They met at an outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland in Lancaster in 1988, and after settling in Camberwell, began collaborating on theatrical productions.

Greatly impacted by the September 11 attacks in the United States, Daldry decided he wanted to start a family and married American performance artist and magazine editor Lucy Sexton, with whom he has a daughter.

Despite this, he continues to refer to himself as gay because the public "[doesn't] like confusion."

Broadway

West End

Detailed theatreography

He was also Artistic Director of London's Gate Theatre (1989–92) and the Metro Theatre Company (1984–86).

He is currently on the Board of the Young and Old Vic Theatres and remains an Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre.

He was Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre from 1992 to 1998, where he headed the £26 million development scheme.

He has received three Academy Awards nominations for Best Director, for the films Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008).

Daldry made his feature film directorial debut with Billy Elliot (2000), which launched the film career of Jamie Bell.

His next film was The Hours, which earned Nicole Kidman her first Best Actress win at the Academy Awards.

He was the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre for 2002 at St Catherine's College, Oxford.

He has also made a film version of The Reader (2008), based on the book of the same name and starring Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes.

The film won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Kate Winslet.

Daldry's fourth film was Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, an adaptation of the book of the same name written by Jonathan Safran Foer, starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and Max von Sydow.

The screenplay was written by Eric Roth.

He went on to direct a stage musical adaptation of Billy Elliot, and in 2009 his work earned him a Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical.

From 2016 to 2020, he produced and directed the Netflix television series The Crown, for which he received one Producers Guild Award nomination, one Producers Guild Award win, two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and one Primetime Emmy Award win for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series.

Daldry joined an elite group of directors by receiving nominations for direction in theatre, television, and film.

Daldry was born in Dorset, the son of singer Cherry (née Thompson) and bank manager Patrick Daldry.

The family moved to Taunton, Somerset, where his father died of cancer when Daldry was aged 14.

Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton, Somerset.

and performed as Sandy Tyrell in Hay Fever for the local amateur society, Taunton Thespians.

At age 18, he won a Royal Air Force scholarship to read English at the University of Sheffield, where he became chairman of the Sheffield University Theatre Group.

After graduation, he spent a year travelling through Italy, where he became a clown's apprentice.