Acting seemed to him an impossible dream. He had a hard time growing up as a child. Although he was born into a quite wealthy farmer family, he was the fourth sibling. Older brothers were always “more” – more ambitious, more talkative, more political. Rowan, meanwhile, struggled with his own weaknesses as a child.
She was a “stutterer” with an extraordinary talent for comedy
Rowan Atkinson has struggled with stuttering since childhood. Despite the passage of years and the help of specialists, the situation improved too slowly. The stuttering was no longer very bothersome, but there were still problems with articulating some sounds. If he ever dreamed of becoming an actor, a speech impediment sidelined him from the very beginning. So he chose the path that seemed natural to him – science. He became an electrical engineer and has a master’s degree in science from the University of Oxford. He even started working on his doctorate, but then his acting career was developing in parallel and he had to give up something.
It was only during his studies that he allowed himself to boldly follow his heart. This led him towards comedy. He became friends with Richard Curtis and Howard Goodall, with whom he later created sketches, scripts and scenes over the years. He was best at pantomime – he didn’t have to speak in it, he just had to make the right face. Fortunately, his stuttering has almost stopped, and he managed to develop methods thanks to which it was almost impossible to hear that he had problems as a child. He still sometimes pronounced the “B” sound too strongly, but he learned to use it in comedy. Student clubs turned into festivals, which turned into regular performances throughout the country. He was so good that he was the youngest person ever to be given his own one-man show on the West End. Rowan Atkinson went from being a scientist to a professional comedian.
The birth of Mr. Bean
According to his older brother Rodney, it was thanks to him that Mr. Bean saw the light of day at all. Great Britain owes Rodney not only the funny Bean, but also Brexit, because as a Eurosceptic politician, he intensively encouraged his compatriots to leave the European Union.
However, in the 1970s, Rodney was teaching at the University of Mainz and needed something to help him teach English to Germans. Recordings of funny pantomimes, to which students recorded live dialogues they invented, turned out to be an excellent exercise. This gave him an idea.
For years I’ve been trying to get Rowan to turn his “lunch-on-a-park-bench nerd” that he used during his shows into a whole series that would sell very well around the world. This kind of silent comedy – it was a guaranteed success, and Rowan had already created the basis for his character – explained Rodney Atkinson years later in an interview with “The Telegraph”.
The persuasion did not produce any results for a long time. Rowan Atkinson was unfazed, dismissing his older brother’s ideas with casual grunts. Although he invented Mr. Bean as a character as an escape from writing his final thesis in college, his character had to wait until 1990 for his television birth. Three years earlier, Atkinson had made sure at a comedy festival in Canada that Beans would appeal to an audience that didn’t necessarily get British humor. The performance was a success and Rowan Atkinson could determine the details of the series – he was actually given a free hand, because after the success of “Blackadder” no one doubted that Atkinson would captivate viewers. Rodney continues to complain that he doesn’t get any royalties from this. But he was right – Mr. Bean gave his youngest brother worldwide fame.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
