Peter Webber is a British director who is best known for his debut feature film Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Cillian Murphy. The film is named after a painting of the same...

and Hannibal Rising.

Early career

Webber made his first short film, The Zebra Man, straight out of film school. He then worked as a film editor, beginning his association with Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Cillian Murphy. The film is named after a painting of the same...

producers Andy Paterson and Anand Tucker

Anand Tucker

Anand Tucker is a film director and producer based in London. He began his career directing factual television programming and adverts...

 on Tucker's drama debut, Saint-Ex

Saint-Ex

Saint-Ex is a 1997 British film biography of French author-adventurer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, filmed and distributed in the United Kingdom, and featuring Bruno Ganz, Eleanor Bron, and Miranda Richardson. The script was by Frank Cottrell Boyce, while the writer's sons, Aidan and George, portrayed...

, starring Miranda Richardson

Miranda Richardson

Miranda Jane Richardson is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes and a BAFTA during her career....

 and Bruno Ganz

Bruno Ganz

Bruno Ganz is a Swiss actor, known for his roles as Damiel in Wings of Desire and Adolf Hitler in Downfall.- Early life :Bruno Ganz was born in Zürich to a Swiss mechanic father and a northern Italian mother. He had decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university...

.

As an award-winning documentary director his subjects ranged from Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 to crash test dummies via a series on the creatures of the deep oceans and The Curse of the Phantom Limb. Moving back into drama, he directed Simon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...

 as Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 and explored the counter-culture of tunnel-dwelling road protesters in Underground, before creating huge controversy with the Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 mini-series Men Only charting the decline into crime and debauchery of the formerly respectable members of a five-a-side soccer team. In the interests of fair play, his next drama The Stretford Wives

The Stretford Wives

The Stretford Wives is a British drama film made by the BBC. It was first broadcast on BBC One in August 2002 and has not been released on DVD. The film revolves around the lives of three sisters – played by Fay Ripley, Claire Rushbrook, and Lindsey Coulson – who live in Stretford,...

, for the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, starred Fay Ripley in a tale of women's revenge on men.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Cillian Murphy. The film is named after a painting of the same...

, starring Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson is an American actress, model and singer.Johansson made her film debut in North and was later nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance in Manny & Lo . She rose to further prominence with her roles in The Horse Whisperer and Ghost World...

 and Colin Firth

Colin Firth

SirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...

, marked Webber's feature film debut. The film has received numerous accolades, including three Academy Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, and 10 BAFTA Award nominations.

Hannibal Rising

Webber was then tapped by Dino De Laurentiis

Dino De Laurentiis

Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian film producer.-Early life:He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father...

 to direct Hannibal Rising. Based on Thomas Harris

Thomas Harris

Thomas Harris is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter...

' book of the same name, and starring Gaspard Ulliel

Gaspard Ulliel

Gaspard Ulliel is a French film actor and model. He began appearing in made-for-television films during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and then began to be known as a film actor in France, as well as starring in the title role in the thriller Hannibal Rising.-Life and career:Ulliel was born in...

, Gong Li

Gong Li

Gong Li is a Chinese film actress. Gong first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is credited with helping to bring Chinese cinema to Europe and the United States....

 and Rhys Ifans

Rhys Ifans

Rhys Ifans is a Welsh actor and musician. He is known for his portrayal of characters such as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed Parry in Enduring Love and as a member of the Welsh rock groups Super Furry Animals and The Peth. Ifans also appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly...

, this prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 depicts a young Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer...

 as he gradually becomes a serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

. It received mostly negative reviews.

Filmography

As director:

• Hannibal Rising (2007)
• Six Feet Under (2004, TV episode "The Dare")
• Girl with a Pearl Earring
  Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
  Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Cillian Murphy. The film is named after a painting of the same...
  
  (2003
  2003 in film
  The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...
  
  )

External links