Nick Park

"Nicholas Park" redirects here. For the field hockey player, see Nicholas Park (field hockey).

Nick Park
CBE RDI
Park at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2007
Born
Nicholas Wulstan Park

(1958-12-06) 6 December 1958 (age 65)
Preston, Lancashire, England
Occupations
  • Director
  • producer
  • screenwriter
  • animator
  • voice actor
Years active1985–present
Works
Spouse
Mags Connolly
​
(m. 2016)​
AwardsFour Academy Awards (1989, 1993, 1995, 2005)
Nick Park's voice
from the BBC programme Desert Island Discs, 19 December 2010.[1]

Nicholas Wulstan Park CBE RDI[2][3] (born 6 December 1958)[4] is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man.[5] Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).[6]

He has also received five BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was also the most watched television programme in the United Kingdom in 2008.[7][8] His 2000 film Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop motion animated film.[9]

In 1985, Park joined Aardman Animations based in Bristol, and for his work in animation he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a 2012 version of Blake's most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.[10][11]

Park was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1997 Birthday Honours for "services to the animated film industry".[12]

  1. ^ "Nick Park". Desert Island Discs. 19 December 2010. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  2. ^ Staff (September 2006). "Nick Park 1958–". Biography Today. 15 (3): 84–101. ISSN 1058-2347. OCLC 24242423.
  3. ^ "BBC Politics 1997: Courage rewarded in honours list". BBC Television News. 1997. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
  4. ^ "PARK, Nicholas Wulstan". Who's Who. Vol. 2015 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. ^ Nick Park at IMDb
  6. ^ "About Aardman". Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  7. ^ Robinson, James (26 December 2008). "Wallace and Gromit lead BBC to Christmas ratings victory". Guardian.co.uk. London. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 26 December 2008.
  8. ^ "Film Winners in 2009". BAFTA. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009. Retrieved 8 February 2009.
  9. ^ "The Longer View: British animation". BBC. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  10. ^ "Close-up: Sir Peter Blake's new Sgt Pepper collage". BBC News. BBC. 2 April 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  11. ^ "New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian. 5 October 2016.
  12. ^ United Kingdom list: "No. 54794". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 1997. p. 9.