Lee Hall(I)

Lee Hall has been the recipient of many awards for all aspects of his work. He won the Alfred Bradley Bursary and the Richard Imison Prize with his first play for radio, "I Luv You Jimmy Spud", which he adapted for the screen as "Gabriel and Me" and which premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Growing up he was inspired by seeing plays in Newcastle, particularly those by C. P. Taylor, Tom Hadaway and the R.S.C. His career stemmed from seeing the film "Kes", which inspired him to try his hand at writing and led to him spending some time as Pearson Writer in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He received a Writers Guild and Talkie Award in 1997 for "Spoonface Steinberg", one of his God's Country series of plays for BBC Radio which was then adapted for television.

Later working on a regular basis with Newcastle's Live Theatre whose production of his 'Cooking With Elvis', which Hall adapted from his own radio play "Blood Sugar", had a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999 and opened in the West End in March the following year. For the National Theatre he adapted an old Dutch play, "The Good Hope" but changed the setting from the Hook of Holland to Whitby. His first screenplay for a feature film was 'Billy Elliot' which was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay 'Oscar' and screened at Cannes 2000 in the closing slot of 'Directors' Fortnight' and since then he's written a script every year.

His stage play 'Cooking With Elvis adapted from his radio play Blood Sugar opened in London's West End in March 2000 after a successful run at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival. He went onto work on screenplays of Uri Gargarin for Film Four and an adaption of the novel Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach. He then became Writer in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company