Antonia Jane Bird, FRSA (27 May 1951 – 24 October 2013Kate Hardie "Antonia Bird obituary", The Guardian, 28 October 2013The day she died is given as 25 October 2013 in Obituary: Antonia Bird, telegraph.co.uk, 27 October 2013; accessed 30 July 2014.) was an English producer and director of television drama and feature films.
Career In 1968, at the age of 17, Bird began working in theatre as an assistant stage manager at Coventry Rep. She worked her way up doing a variety of jobs, including acting, stage management, publicity, theatre administration and directing in repertory and regional theatres. She directed a season of plays at The Studio at Chester Theatre and later joined Leicester's Phoenix Theatre as a director.Simon Farquhar "Obituary: Antonia Bird, Television director with a flair for gritty realism", The Independent, 30 October 2013.
Bird was named resident director at the Royal Court Theatre in 1978. She was appointed artistic director of the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, London's leading venue for new writing. Her first television production was Submariners (1983), an adaptation of one of her Royal Court productions which she directed for the BBC.Submariners, bfi.org.uk; accessed 30 July 2014."Play Not-Quite-For Today", TVCream.co.uk; accessed 30 July 2014. She was recruited by the originators and founding producers of EastEnders, Julia Smith and Tony Holland, to direct the series in 1985; she directed 17 episodes, including the series' first two-hander, between the characters Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) and Angie Watts (Anita Dobson).From EastEnders to Hollywood: Antonia Bird, BBC Four, 26 May 2016.
The creators of Casualty (1986) recruited her to be one of the series' first directors. She next directed the six-part adaptation of Ann Oakley's The Men's Room (BBC 1991). Her next production was a feature-length film adaptation of A Masculine Ending (1992). Subsequently, Safe (BBC 1993), a story based on the lives of a group of homeless young people in London's West End was awarded the Best Single Drama TV BAFTA. The film also won a British Academy Award and a clutch of festival prizes including the Edinburgh International Film Festival First Film Award and Best British Film at the Dinard Film Festival. The film brought Bird to international attention, but was overshadowed by the success of Priest (BBC/Miramax 1994), which she directed immediately following Safe.
Bird's film Care, broadcast in 2000, dealt with sexual abuse in a children's home, and won the Best Single Drama TV BAFTA. She received a BAFTA Children's Award for the 2009 BBC documentary Off By Heart, about a national poetry competition for schoolchildren.
Bird developed feature films with Sony, Columbia, Warner Brothers, Fine Line and some American independent companies. She returned to London to shoot Face (UIP/New Line 1997), a gangster film. She was back in the U.S. to develop the horror satire Ravenous, with Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle and David Arquette (20th Century Fox 1999).
In 2005, she produced Faith, a 4Way Pictures/Company Pictures production about the 1984–1985 national miners' strike. She was an executive producer of the 2009 Iraqi film Son of Babylon.
In 2010, she and Kay Mellor realised their story about Mellor's mother in A Passionate Woman (BBC 2010), which the duo directed.
In 2011, Cross My Mind, Bird's next film, was set to start shooting.
In 2012, Bird directed the first four episodes of the first series of Peter Moffat's BBC period drama, The Village. Series 2 episode 1 finishes with the tribute 'For Antonia Bird 1951–2013'.
Affiliations Bird was a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Directors Guild of America, Directors UK, BECTU, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Death Bird died from a rare anaplastic thyroid cancer on 24 October 2013 at the age of 62. She is survived by her husband, the TV editor Ian Ilett.
Filmography
Television +YearTitleRoleNotes2013The VillageSeries 12010A Passionate Woman2009Off by Heart TV documentary2006Cracker Special Episode2005Spooks 2004The Hamburg CellTV movie2003Rehab TV movie2000CareTV movie1993Full Stretch1992A Masculine EndingTV movie1991The Men's Room1988Thin Air1986–1987Casualty1985–1986EastEnders
Film +YearTitleRoleNotes2018Oi For England's Green and Pleasant LandExecutive Producer (posthumous credit)2009Son of BabylonExecutive Producer2005FaithProducer1999Ravenous1997Face1995Mad Love1994Priest 1993Safe
See also List of female film and television directors List of LGBT-related films directed by women
References
External links
Additional sources Ciecko, Anne T. "Sex, God, Television, Realism, and the British Women Filmmakers Beeban Kidron and Antonia Bird", Journal of Film and Video, Spring 1999, pp. 22–41 McCabe, Bob. "East End Heat", Sight and Sound, October 1997, pp. 10–12