A British comedian you might not have known called Norman Wisdom - I can’t say I was a big fan of his, but at least there was a tradition. And then in terms of visual stuff, Chaplin and Keaton and Harold Lloyd and all those. I loved that character - again, it’s the veneer of respectability disguising suburban prejudice of a really quite vicious and dismissive nature.

And then Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna Everege. And then latterly more of what John Cleese did - a major, major inspiration I think that he and I are quite different in our style and our approach, but certainly it was comedy I liked to watch. Rowan Atkinson: My early comedy influences I suppose would have been Beyond the Fringe, a comedy revue sketch troupe with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, and then Monty Python - I remember watching them avidly as students at university. I like to focus on one thing, get it done, take a break and then work on another thing.” “I’m not someone who juggles a lot of balls in the air. “I’m someone who tends to concentrate on only one thing at a time,” Atkinson told me. Upcoming are a brace of television films (for ITV) in which Atkinson will play George Simenon’s “Inspector Maigret.” That is exciting news from both ends of the equation. “Bean” was, in turn, followed by the very verbal “Thin Blue Line,” a sitcom by Ben Elton (also a “Bean” writer), in which Atkinson played a suburban policeman.Īmong many other stage and screen appearances, including the role of Fagin in a 2009 revival of “Oliver!,” there would be two movies featuring the Bond-like “Johnny English,” which received mix reviews but earned a lot of money. Like “Bean,” which began in work for the stage, it was co-created with his friend since Oxford, Richard Curtis, who with “Four Weddings and a Funeral” would later invent the modern British rom-com. By all accounts Atkinson was an excellent student (he was a classmate of Tony Blair), holding a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Newcastle University, and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Oxford reportedly, he has an IQ of 178, which if true would place him 78 points higher than the average person and 18 points higher than the reported IQs of geniuses like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Apparently, it takes a big brain to craft such inspired stupidity.He was 28 when “Blackadder” debuted, with Atkinson, in different historical eras, as the worst man in Britain. But this is another key area, apparently, where the real life Rowan Atkinson is quite different. While it's easy to think of Bean as wide-eyed, innocent and lovable - something akin to Will Ferrell in 'Elf' - what sets Bean apart is the salty, selfish impulses that often manifest themselves when he thinks he can get away with them, similar to how a child might behave when he thinks he's not being watched.Īnother defining characteristic of Bean, perhaps, is stupidity. He obeys the rules, as long as they suit him.' ' are anarchists at heart, and I think that's what Mr. 'I always imagine him as a 9-year-old boy,' Atkinson says of how he creates the outrageous scenarios Bean finds himself in.

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