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Joseph Wright (born 25 August 1972) is an English film director. His motion pictures include the period drama adaptations Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012), and Cyrano (2021), the action thriller Hanna (2011), the Peter Pan origin story Pan (2015), and Darkest Hour (2017).
He began his career working at his parents' puppet theatre, the Little Angel Theatre in Islington. He also took classes at the Anna Scher Theatre School and acted professionally on stage and camera. He spent an art foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts, before taking a degree in fine art and film at Central St Martins where he was tutored by Malcolm Le Grice and Vera Neubauer. In his last year of studies he received a scholarship to make a short film for the BBC that won several awards.
During the 1990s, he worked at Oil Factory, a music video production company based in Caledonian Road, Kings Cross. He worked on a variety of productions in numerous roles, including casting director. Here, he was able to get the opportunity to direct some music videos. Alongside this, particularly on the strength of his short film work, he was also developing The End, his second short film. During this decade, he also worked part-time as a roadie for Vegetable Vision, who created visuals for electronic music bands such as Chemical Brothers, Darren Emerson, Underworld and Andrew Weatherall. Wright attributes some of the aesthetic and emotion of the UK rave scene as an influence on his work.Solomons, Jason It's all about bums on seats The Observer. 10 February 2008. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
He followed this up with the serials Bodily Harm (2002) with Timothy Spall and the highly acclaimed (2003) with Rufus Sewell, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Serial.
In 2022, Wright began directing an eight-part adaptation of the bestselling novel , a historical novel by Antonio Scurati recounting the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2024 and began airing on Sky Atlantic on 10 January 2025.
In 2023, Wright was developing an adaptation for HBO of the bestselling non-fiction book about Inheritance Huguette Clark, daughter of copper baron and United States Senator William A. Clark.
Wright's next feature was an adaptation of Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Atonement (2007), which reunited Wright with Keira Knightley, and also stars James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan. It was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, more than any other film that year. Though Wright was not nominated for director, the film received seven Academy Award nominations, winning only for Best Original Score. At the BAFTA Awards, it received 14 nominations and won Best Film and Best Production Design.
Wright's next film was The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. It is about the "true story of musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who developed schizophrenia in his second year at Juilliard and ended up homeless on the streets of downtown L.A. where he performs the violin and cello." It was to be released on 21 November 2008, but was pushed back to 24 April 2009.
Wright reunited with Atonement star Saoirse Ronan for the 2011 action thriller Hanna. The title character is a 15-year-old girl trained since birth to be an assassin by her father (Eric Bana), a rogue CIA asset. It received mostly positive reviews, with Roger Ebert calling it a "first-rate thriller". It received an aggregate score of 65 from Metacritic ("generally positive" reviews).
Wright directed the 2012 screen adaptation by Sir Tom Stoppard of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel Anna Karenina. The cast included Keira Knightley as Anna, Jude Law as her husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as her young love, Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson as Konstantin Levin, as well as Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Matthew Macfadyen and Michelle Dockery. Saoirse Ronan and Andrea Riseborough were initially cast, but dropped out and were replaced by Alicia Vikander and Ruth Wilson, respectively.
Wright then directed the 2015 prequel to Peter Pan for Warner Bros. The film starred Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried and Levi Miller as Peter. The screenplay by actor-turned-screenwriter Jason Fuchs was from the 2013 Hollywood Black List, a selection of popular unproduced scripts. The film was negatively received by critics and was considered a commercial flop, failing to recoup its budget at the box office. Rooney Mara's casting as Tiger Lily caused a Racebending, due to her being of European ancestry, while Tiger Lily is traditionally portrayed as Native American.
Wright's 2017 film Darkest Hour covers a pivotal month in the life of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It stars Gary Oldman as Churchill, along with Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, David Schofield, Kristin Scott Thomas, Samuel West and Lily James. Wright said the film was a rebuke to Donald Trump.
Charles II: The Power and The Passion, Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna all have long in them. Atonement has a continuous five-minute and five second shot of the Dunkirk evacuation. "Basically, I just like showing off", Wright told the audience at the Hay Festival.
Wright was married to British-American sitarist Anoushka Shankar from 2010 until 2019. They have two sons, Zubin and Mohan, born in 2011 and 2015. They separated in December 2017 and their divorce was finalized in September 2019 as a judge concluded that Wright had committed adultery and that his wife found living with him "intolerable".
Since 2017, Wright has been in a relationship with American actress Haley Bennett. Their daughter was born in 2018 in Brooklyn Heights. "How a New Generation of Designers Is Shaking Up Storied Fashion Houses" , Vogue, 13 February 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2019. "Back in Brooklyn Heights with her rescue dog, River, Bennett's personal goal is about 'transforming and decorating my house. I have 60 pairs of shoes—and no forks.'" As of 2019, the family resides in the UK in Somerset.
| 2005 | Pride & Prejudice | Focus Features / Universal Pictures |
| 2007 | Atonement | Universal Pictures |
| 2009 | The Soloist | Paramount Pictures / Universal Pictures |
| 2011 | Hanna | Focus Features / Sony Pictures Releasing |
| 2012 | Anna Karenina | Focus Features |
| 2015 | Pan | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| 2017 | Darkest Hour | Focus Features / Universal Pictures |
| 2021 | The Woman in the Window | Netflix |
| Cyrano | United Artists Releasing / Universal Pictures |
Executive producer
| 2000 | Nature Boy | Miniseries |
| 2001 | Bob & Rose | 4 episodes |
| 2002 | Bodily Harm | Miniseries |
| 2003 | Television film | |
| 2016 | Black Mirror | Episode "Nosedive" |
| 2024 | The Agency | 2 episodes |
| 2025 | 8 episodes |
| +Awards and nominations received for films directed by Wright | |||||||
| 2005 | Pride & Prejudice | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | ||
| 2007 | Atonement | 7 | 1 | 14 | 2 | 7 | 2 |
| 2012 | Anna Karenina | 4 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2017 | Darkest Hour | 6 | 2 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2021 | Cyrano | 1 | 4 | 2 | |||
| 2005 | Pride & Prejudice | BAFTA Awards | Most Promising Newcomer | |
| Boston Society of Film Critics | Best New Filmmaker | |||
| Chicago Film Critics Association | Most Promising Filmmaker | |||
| Empire Awards | Best Director | |||
| London Film Critics' Circle | British Newcomer of the Year | |||
| 2007 | Atonement | BAFTA Awards | Best Direction | |
| Broadcast Film Critics Association | Best Director | |||
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Director | |||
| London Film Critics' Circle | Best Director | |||
| Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards | Best Director | |||
| Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association | Best Director | |||
| 2021 | The Woman in the Window | Golden Raspberry Awards | Worst Director | |
Directed Academy Award performances
| Academy Award for Best Actor | |||||||
| 2018 | Gary Oldman | Darkest Hour | |||||
| Academy Award for Best Actress | |||||||
| 2006 | Keira Knightley | Pride & Prejudice | |||||
| Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress | |||||||
| 2008 | Saoirse Ronan | Atonement | |||||
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