Nick Willing

Nick Willing (born 1961) is a British director, producer and writer of films and television series.

Early life

Willing is the son of Portuguese painter Dame Paula Rego and English artist Victor Willing and was largely brought up in Portugal, but settled in England at the age of 12 after the family suffered a business collapse. In 2017, he directed a television film, Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories, about his mother, featuring his two sisters and his brother-in-law, Australian sculptor Ron Mueck.

He graduated from The National Film and Television School in 1982 and started directing music videos for bands such as Eurythmics, Bob Geldof, Swing Out Sister, Debbie Gibson, Kirsty MacColl, Kim Appleby, Tony Banks, and Nik Kershaw.

Throughout this period, he was also writing screenplays, and in 1996 his adaptation of the Steve Szilagyi novel Photographing Fairies was financed by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and made into a feature film. Photographing Fairies was a critical success and won several awards including the Méliès d’Or in 1998.

Alice in Wonderland followed with a cast which included Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley, Robbie Coltrane, Martin Short, Peter Ustinov, Gene Wilder, Ken Dodd, Christopher Lloyd, George Wendt and Miranda Richardson. Alice was made for NBC television in 1999 and won 4 Primetime Emmys.

Director filmography 1997 – Photographing Fairies 1999 – Alice in Wonderland 2000 – Jason and the Argonauts 2002 – Close Your Eyes a.k.a. Doctor Sleep and Hypnotic 2004 – Sea of Souls 2005 – The River King 2006 – Jackanory, The Magician of Samarkand and Muddle Earth 2007 – Tin Man 2009 – Alice 2011 – Neverland 2013 – Baby Sellers 2014 – Altar 2015 – Olympus 2017 – Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories 2019 – Unstoppable. Sean Scully & The Art of Everything

As writer Nick Willing wrote his first two movies Photographing Fairies and Doctor Sleep and went on to develop the short stories of H. G. Wells into a semi-biographical television series, The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells, which premiered in 2001. He also wrote the series Alice which received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and Neverland for the Syfy network and Sky Movies.

In 2014, he wrote the thriller Altar and created the 13-part series Olympus.

House of Stories

In 2013, Nick stepped in to help negotiate an alternative contract for Casa Das Histórias Paula Rego, the Cascais, Portugal museum dedicated to his mother’s work. As a consequence of the 2011–14 international bailout to Portugal by the European Union and the IMF, the Portuguese government closed several foundations, including Paula Rego's, leaving the museum in limbo. He now remains in an administrative role, representing his mother’s interests at the museum.

Interviews