Rowan Atkinson: “Mr. Bean” celebrates his 70th birthday

Hardly any other actor is as identified with his most famous role as Rowan Atkinson (70) with his character of Mr. Bean. Even though he hasn’t slipped into the role of the unworldly and childish klutz for almost 20 years, almost everything he does is associated with this role of his life, compared or perceived as a continuation of this character under different circumstances.

The fact that this is the case has a lot to do with Atkinson’s face – and the spectacularly comic facial expressions it is able to produce with just a few muscle movements. Trained by great role models of the silent film era such as Buster Keaton (1895-1966) and Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), the expressive comedian relied primarily on gestures and facial expressions in his cult series “Mr. Bean”, produced between 1990 and 1995. In his British homeland, this soon earned him the nickname “Rubber Face.”

The fact that Atkinson almost completely dispensed with language in his portrayal of the quirky Mr. Bean created the basis for his worldwide fame. , the series was sold to over 90 countries. Mr. Bean, who turns every everyday situation into an absurd catastrophe through his clumsiness and erratic behavior, is universally understandable across all cultural differences.

With his humorous face, Rowan Atkinson had already made a name for himself in Great Britain before becoming an international slapstick superstar. In the BBC series “Blackadder”, which he conceived, he pulled out all the humor stops between 1983 and 1989 to satirize the English aristocratic history with typically British humor. However, due to the hardly translatable wordplay and the personal references to British politics and history, the success of the bizarre series was largely limited to the English-speaking world.

After the resounding success of “Mr. Bean”, Atkinson continued between 1995 and 1996 with the sitcom “Inspector Fowler – Tougher than the police allow” (“The Thin Blue Line”), in which he played a quirky – and the powerful language – a commissioner who drives his colleagues crazy with anachronistic investigative tactics and ridiculous pedantry.

He then brought Mr. Bean to the big screen for the first time in “Bean – The Ultimate Disaster Movie” (1997) and was once again a worldwide success. This was initially followed by roles in major British and US cinema productions such as “Rat Race” (2001) or “Scooby-Doo” (2002), before Atkinson surprisingly introduced a new speaking character, “Johnny English”, which, however, unmistakably brought with it some distinctive characteristics of Mr. Bean.

In the James Bond parody “Johnny English – The Spy Who Spilled It” (2003) he appeared for the first time as a goofy spy in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. After the great success at the box office, two more films followed under the titles “Johnny English – Now especially” (2011) and “Johnny English – You only live three times” (2018).

Atkinson resurrected his cult character Mr. Bean one last time in 2007 in his film “Mr. Bean is on Vacation”. Since then, the question of whether he will ever again slip into the role that made him famous has become a standard part of every interview with the actor.

Shortly after the film’s release: “Maybe it really was the last time I played Mr. Bean. At least at the moment I can’t imagine doing it again. You know, you get older too. I I don’t want Mr. Bean to look too old on screen. He’s a timeless, ageless character.”

But even without Mr. Bean, the actor still has a lot to offer and regularly uses his exceptional humorous talent, most recently in the hilarious Netflix comedy series “Man vs. Bee” and the US production “Wonka”, a prequel to that The classic children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl (1916-1990) has been filmed several times.

The fact that Rowan Atkinson has taken things a little easier in recent years doesn’t just have to do with his advanced age. In 2017, the British superstar and multimillionaire, who has been in a relationship with actress Louise Ford (44), who is 27 years his junior since 2014, became a father again in his old age with the birth of his daughter Isla (7).