Phyllida Lloyd

 ( 1957 Births ) 

Phyllida Christian Lloyd, (born 17 June 1957) is an English film and theatre director and producer. She has been nominated for a British Academy Film Award, a European Film Award, a Laurence Olivier Award and two Tony Awards. She was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010.

Her theatre work includes directing productions at the Royal Court Theatre and Royal National Theatre, and opera director for Opera North and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Her adaptation of three Shakespeare plays ( Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest) received acclaim from critics, with The Guardian calling it "one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years".

She is best known for directing Mamma Mia! (2008) and The Iron Lady (2011), the latter being an Academy Award winning film.

---

Early life and education Lloyd was born and raised in Nempnett Thrubwell, Somerset, south of Bristol. She attended Lawnside School, which merged with Malvern St James in 1994.

---

Career

---

1979–1999: Early works and acclaim After graduating from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University in 1979 (BA, English), she spent five years working in BBC Television Drama. In 1985 she was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary to be Trainee Director at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. The following year she was appointed Associate Director at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, then in 1989 Associate Director of the Bristol Old Vic, where her production of The Comedy of Errors was a success.David Benedict "Arts: Together wherever we go", The Independent, 29 April 2011

She moved on to the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester where she directed The Winter's Tale, The School for Scandal, Medea, and an acclaimed production of Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka. "Death and the Kings Horseman" , Royal Exchange Theatre website In 1991 she made her debut at the Royal Shakespeare Company with a well-received production of a little-known play by Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso. Although she followed this in 1992 with a successful production of the rarely seen Artists and Admirers by Alexander Ostrovsky, she has, as of 2007, never returned to the RSC.

Also in 1992 came her first commercial success: her Royal Court Theatre production of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation transferred to the West End. In 1994 she made her debut at Royal National Theatre with a production of Pericles which divided the critics.See Pericles at the Royal National Theatre by Melissa Gibson, in Pericles: Critical Essays (Shakespeare Criticism, Volume 23) There was general praise, however, for her productions of Hysteria by Terry Johnson at the Royal Court and Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera at the Donmar Warehouse.

By this time, Lloyd's work had come to the attention of Nicholas Payne, then running Opera North. For her debut as an opera director he steered her to what was, at least in the UK, an obscurity – L'Etoile by Chabrier. The production was a great success, setting Lloyd on a significant and award-winning career as an opera director. Productions since then include La Boheme, Gloriana, Luigi Cherubini's Medea, Albert Herring and Peter Grimes for Opera North; Dialogues of the Carmelites for English National Opera/Welsh National Opera; Verdi's Macbeth (for the Bastille Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden); the premiere of Poul Ruders' opera The Handmaid's Tale (from the novel by Margaret Atwood); and a controversial Ring cycle for ENO. For Gloriana A Film She received an International Emmy and a FIPA d'Or. Her productions have won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 1991 (Gloriana) 2000 (The Carmelites) and 2007 (Peter Grimes).

In spite of the mixed reception accorded to her first production at the National Theatre, Lloyd nonetheless returned to direct productions of The Way of the World, Pericles, What the Butler Saw, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Duchess of Malfi, which were well received. She directed an award-winning production of Boston Marriage at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2001. Other recent work includes Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart newly adapted by poet Peter Oswald, which ran at the Donmar Warehouse, London, and was transferred to the Apollo Theatre, London, and then to the broadway theatre in spring 2009.

---

2000–present: Mamma Mia! and film work In 1999, Lloyd was offered the chance to direct the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, which became a hit, not only in the West End and on Broadway, but worldwide. She directed the 2008 cinematic adaptation, which marked her feature film debut. By the end of 2008, the film had been certified as the biggest grossing film at the UK box office ever. It was also certified as the UK's biggest-selling DVD. She was nominated as Best Director of a Play in the 2009 Tony Awards for her production of Mary Stuart. In 2013 Lloyd directed Cush Jumbo in a one-woman show about Josephine Baker at the Bush Theatre and subsequently at Joe's Pub in New York. Between 2012 and 2017 she directed the Donmar Warehouse Trilogy in London and New York. Harriet Walter played Brutus in Julius Caesar, the title role in Henry IV and Prospero in The Tempest in a single day. Susannah Clapp in The Guardian described the Trilogy as "one of the most important theatrical events of the last twenty years".

Lloyd directed The Iron Lady, a biopic of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with Meryl Streep as Thatcher. The film entered production in January 2011 and was released in December of that year. Meryl Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Thatcher.Catherine Shoard "Meryl Streep's Margaret Thatcher revealed in first still from The Iron Lady", The Guardian, 8 February 2011 Lloyd's film Herself written by Clare Dunne and Malcolm Campbell and starring Clare Dunne premiered at The 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

---

Personal life

Lloyd's romantic partner is Sarah Cooke. On 16 August 2018, Lloyd condemned the destruction of the Said al-Mishal Cultural Centre in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City five days earlier.

---

Credits

---

Film

2008	Mamma Mia!
2011	The Iron Lady
2018	Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!
2020	Herself

---

Television

2000	Gloriana	TV movie

---

Theater

As a Director

1987	Accidental Death of an Anarchist	Dario Fo	Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
1992	Six Degrees of Separation	John Guare	Royal Court Theatre, London
1994	The Threepenny Opera	Bertolt Brecht	Donmar Warehouse, London
1999	Mamma Mia!	Catherine Johnson	Prince of Wales Theatre, London
2001			Winter Garden Theater, Broadway
2005	Mary Stuart	Friedrich Schiller	Donmar Warehouse, London
2009			Broadhurst Theater, Broadway
2012	Julius Cesar	William Shakespeare	Donmar Warehouse, London
			Brooklyn Academy of Music
2013	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	Samuel Taylor Coleridge	Brooklyn Academy of Music
2015	Josephine And I	Cush Jumbo	The Public Theater, Off-Broadway
	Henry IV	William Shakespeare	Donmar Warehouse, London
2016	The Taming of the Shrew		The Public Theater, Off-Broadway
	Henry IV Parts 1 and 2		Donmar Warehouse, London
	The Tempest		Donmar Warehouse, London
	Julius Cesar		Donmar Warehouse, London
2018	Tina	Various	Aldwych Theatre, London
2019			Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Broadway
2024	'' Grenfell: in the Words of Survivors	Gillian Slovo	St. Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn
2025	Mamma Mia!	Catherine Johnson	Winter Garden Theatre, Broadway

---

Awards and nominations

2021	Best Direction of a Musical	Tina

---

Honorary awards

2010	Ranked 22nd Most Influential British LGBT Person

---

See also

• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women
• Women's cinema

---

External links

• Interview with Lloyd and Margaret Atwood in The Guardian
• Playbill biography
• British Film Magazine – Song and Dance : Lloyd Directs Mamma Film

Categories: 1957 Births, Living People, 20th-century English Lgbtq People, 21st-century English Lgbtq People, Alumni Of The University Of Birmingham, British Lgbtq Film Directors, British Opera Directors, British Women Theatre Directors, Commanders Of The Order Of The British Empire, English Film Directors, English Lesbian Artists, English Theatre Directors, English Women Film Directors, Fellows Of St Catherine's College, Oxford, Female Opera Directors, Lgbtq Theatre Directors, People Educated At Malvern St James, People From Bath And North East Somerset, Shakespearean Directors, Wftv Award Winners

Post Comment