Atkinson, Rowan (1955– )

English comedian, screen actor, and writer. Atkinson's awkward screen presence, based as much on physical clownishness as verbal wit, first gained widespread attention on the 1979 comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News. He became internationally known from the 1990s for his television and film character Mr Bean.

Atkinson's position as one of the UK's leading small-screen comic actors was cemented with the Blackadder series (1983–89), written by two English writers with whom he has had a close association, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton. With Curtis he developed the 1990s hit series Mr Bean, a throwback to the physical comedy of silent cinema, which found worldwide success and spawned the feature films, Bean (1997) and Mr Bean's Holiday (2007), in which Atkinson reprised his television role. He also starred in the television series The Thin Blue Line, set in a police station and written by Elton. In 2001, he starred in the film Rat Race. He had small but memorable parts in the Curtis-written hit films Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Love Actually (2003).