Rebecca Frayn

Rebecca Frayn is an English documentary film maker, screenwriter, novelist and actress.

Career Rebecca Frayn is a film maker and screenwriter. She has directed a wide variety of quirky documentary essays for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV on subjects that range from Tory Wives to the Friern Barnet Mental Asylum and identical twins.

She played the role of June in the 1979 TV movie One Fine Day, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Robert Stephens and Dominic Guard. She appeared uncredited as the photograph image by Denis O'Regan of Liam Neeson's character's dead wife, Joanna, in the film Love Actually (2003), directed by Richard Curtis.

She made her drama debut as a director with Whose Baby? for ITV, a TV drama that tackled father's rights, starring Sophie Okonedo and Andrew Lincoln. A screenplay she wrote for the BBC, Killing Me Softly explored the true story of Sara Thornton, whose conviction for murder helped bring about a reform of the law on domestic violence. She has written and/or directed a number of films about prominent women, including Leni Riefenstahl, Annie Leibovitz and Nora Ephron. Her screenplay about Aung San Suu Kyi, The Lady, directed by Luc Besson and starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis was awarded the Amnesty International Human Rights Film Award in 2011.

Her first novel, One Life, dealt with the complex emotional and ethical landscape of IVF. Her second novel, Deceptions, is a psychological thriller, inspired by a true story; it explores the impact on a family when a child goes missing.

After making a short film in 2008 opposing the proposed expansion of London Heathrow Airport, Frayn co-founded We CAN, a group who lobbied the government to take action on climate change in the run up to the 2010 Copenhagen Conference.

Frayn wrote the screenplay for the 2020 film Misbehaviour, that deals with the controversy surrounding the 1970 Miss World competition, and the birth of feminism.

Personal life

The daughter of playwright and novelist Michael Frayn and his first wife, Gillian (née Palmer), Frayn grew up in North West England. She graduated from the University of Bristol in 1984. She married film producer Andy Harries in July 1992 and they have three children: twin sons, Jack Harries and Finn Harries, and a daughter Emmy. Frayn had to undergo IVF to have her daughter, an experience which inspired her novel One Life. She has served as chair of Turnham Green Friends, a group that helps to care for the park of that name in Chiswick.

Credits

As novelist

Year Name Publisher 2006 One Life Simon & Schuster 2010 Deceptions Simon & Schuster

As drama director

Year Film Broadcaster 2003 Single – Episodes 1 to 3 of 6 Tiger Aspect for ITV1 2004 Whose Baby? Granada ITV1

As documentary director

Year Film Broadcaster 1991 The Ghosts of Oxford Street Channel 4 / Middlemarch Films 1993 Annie Leibovitz – South Bank Show ITV / Middlemarch Films 1995 Talk Radio – Naked News Channel 4 / Oxford TV 1995 Nora Ephron – South Bank Show LWT / Middlemarch Films 1995 Tory Wives – Modern Times BBC 2 / Middlemarch Films 1997 Identical Twins – Cutting Edge Channel 4 / Middlemarch Films 1998 Bare – Modern Times BBC 2 / Middlemarch Films 1999 Asylum – Cutting Edge Channel 4 / Compulsive Viewing 2000 Space X3 episodes BBC 2 / Middlemarch Films 2003 The World According To Parr – Imagine BBC One

As documentary producer

Year Film Broadcaster 1993 The Wonderful Horrible World of Leni Riefenstahl – Without Walls Special Channel 4 / Middlemarch and Omega Films 1999 Upstarts x 3 episodes Channel 4 / Middlemarch Films

As screen writer

Year Film Broadcaster Director 1991 The Last Laugh He Play/She Play Channel 4/ Middlemarch Films Betsan Morris Evans 1991 The Ghosts of Oxford Street Channel 4 / Middlemarch Films Rebecca Frayn and Malcolm McLaren 1996 Killing Me Softly – Screen on One BBC Two/Middlemarch Films Stephen Wittaker 2011 The Lady Europacorp and Left Bank Pictures Luc Besson 2020 Misbehaviour Pathé and Left Bank Pictures Philippa Lowthorpe

As actress

Year Film Role Director 1979 One Fine Day June Stephen Frears 2003 Love Actually Joanna (photo image) Richard Curtis