Alan Birkinshaw

Birthday: 15 June 1944, Auckland, New Zealand

Alan Birkinshaw started his working career as a Jackaroo in Australia. Soon afterwords he became a horse breaker and then a rodeo rider. He returned to the UK and on his 20th birthday, joined Lew Grad ...Show More

Alan Birkinshaw started his working career as a Jackaroo in Australia. Soon afterwords he became a horse breaker and then a rodeo rider. He returned to the UK and on his 20th birthday, joined Lew Grade's ATV as a television cameraman working on main stream dramas and light entertainment shows. After 18 months, he left ATV and became a freelance TV cameraman. Aged 22, Birkinshaw directed and produced his first television drama, 'A Nice Dream While It Lasted', written by his sister, internationally renowned author, Fay Weldon. At 24, Birkinshaw was directing television programs for Westward Television and then London Weekend Television. These shows included quiz shows, farming programs, live television news shows, and drama. He directed a ground breaking, before its time, light entertainment show beamed down to the UK from a circling airplane. This was for a pirate TV station run by the then infamous Ronan O'Rahilly, who began the first ever pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, in the 60s. Soon after, Birkinshaw turned to documentaries and commercials and then moved into the world of feature films. One of his first movies was a horror film, Killer's Moon (1978), which he co-wrote with his sister, Fay Weldon, and also produced. This has since become a cult film, attracting a certain amount of controversy, and thirty years after its production is being studied in universities and other film courses. Next, a short film called 'Dead End' which Birkinshaw also wrote and directed. Dead End was the first film for the multi Oscar-nominated composer 'George Fenton' . The film had a major cinema release in the UK and went on to be shown all round the world. After another two short films, Henley and The Circus, Birkinshaw went to the Philippines to make an action adventure movie called Greed, starring Stuart Whitman, Harold Sakata and Edmund Purdom. It wasn't easy getting finance for movies in England, and he soon went back to making commercials, at the same time setting up his own film distribution and production company, West World Films. Birkinshaw was Additional Director (uncredited) on a movie called 'Ordeal By Innocence' starring Donald Sutherland. Soon after, Birkinshaw found himself in India making a dramatized documentary on the life of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This was commissioned by the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi and caused questions to be asked in the Indian Parliament. By now Birkinshaw was getting a reputation for tough assignments and he was called in to direct an action series called Zorc with the volatile German actor, Klaus Loewitsch. Soon after, Birkinshaw was in Africa with more tough actors. 'Oliver Reed' in The House of Usher (1989) was just one of them. In a Swiss/German/ French co-production Birkinshaw directed the true story of a Swiss boxer in a film called Punch (1994) starring 'Donald Sutherland' . The boxing sequences in this movie were hailed as extraordinary given the time and the budget. The hugely budgeted Space Precinct (1994) and its famous action sequences with the Cyborg which Birkinshaw directed was followed by more work in Germany and saw Birkinshaw directing 90 minute comedy dramas for German television - a series called Die Unbestechliche (1994)starred Maja Maranow and the prestigious actor, Martin Benrath. Birkinshaw has won many awards for his work, and more recently he has been writing screenplays, a novel, and directing occasionally. He also has a thriving business producing and selling marble statues to customers all over the world. Hide