Beany wonder
What you donât know about the most rubber-faced man
you know:
Indu BALACHANDRAN
PROFILE: He brushes his teeth and changes his clothes - all while
driving a car.
He looks smugly around his class - then realizes heâs prepared for
the wrong exam.
He tries everything, but falls hopelessly asleep in church. If these
were clues in a quiz, youâd say at once âMr. Bean of course!â But look
at this other set of clues:
He went to school with Tony Blair. His biggest passion and hobby:
fancy racing cars.
Heâs married to a gorgeous Hindu woman, Sunetra Sastry.
Would your just as easily have guessed, âRowan Atkinson!?â
Yes, these are the surprising facts about the rather private side of
your beloved Mr. Bean (or the obnoxious Mr. Bean, if you hated that
episode of him running around naked in a posh hotel, for instance.)
But people in 95 countries (and travellers in 50 airlines) canât seem
to have enough of this rubber-faced
Malleable Face: âMr. Beanâs Holidayâ. |
wonder of blunders. Not just in manageable doses of 20-minutes
episodes, but even entire feature film lengths of him, as the success of
the blockbusting âMr. Beanâs Holidayâ proves.
Reluctant comic
Rowan Atkinson was born into an English farming family in 1955, and
when he wasnât making his classmates fall apart laughing with
impersonations of teachers, he was taking apart all things mechanical,
and enjoying putting them back.
In fact in that very school was a young lad, Tony Blair - though
Rowan only remembers him as âsomeone who smiled a lot.â
Rowanâs schoolboy heroes were Buster Keaton and the French comedian
Jacques Tati - and Rowan became obsessed with staging their skits - and
yet managed to get excellent grades.
And despite the many pranks he pulled on his hapless masters, it was
his Headmaster who first advised Rowan to seriously consider a career in
entertainment.
However, Rowan believed his real interest was in engineering, topping
his class with a Masters in Electronics. But everything was to change
when he met the talented Richard Curtis - who drew him firmly into the
path of show biz.
Together, they would create path-breaking shows like âNot The Nine
OâClock Newsâ, the raucously funny âBlack Adderâ series and even âMr.
Bean. Rowan Atkinson was making waves as Britainâs funniest man, but
once off the stage he would plunge into his private shy world, steering
clear of interviews and publicity.
Something that even affected his romance. He fell heavily in love
with a very attractive BBC makeup artiste called Sunetra Sastry... but
it took months to summon the courage to ask her for a date.
What followed could well have made a Bean episode, as the meal was
conducted in tongue tied silence except for asking her to pass the
ketchup.
Then he suddenly disappeared to the menâs room and never returned for
15 minutes. Later he confessed that he broke his zipper and had to find
a waiter with a safety pin.
Family life
Despite this Beany start, their romance deepened, and in 1990 they
married in secret at a New York restaurant... without summoning the
Father, The Son and the Holy Goat - (his best known line in Four
Weddings and a Funeral).
Rowan and Sunetra have two children but so fiercely guarded is he
about his home life, that interviews have revealed nothing about his
wifeâs origins, except that she is probably part-Indian, and that she is
a âBritish Hinduâ.
But when he does make his rare appearance on the red carpet, itâs
with his drop-dead ravishing dark-haired wife.
And behind the worldâs most malleable face is another story - as a
child, Rowan suffered from a bout of stuttering - with particular
difficulty over the letter âBâ.
The struggle to get a word our often resulted in making the wildest
faces - and as politically incorrect as it was - led to the first
spontaneous bursts of laughter for his âtalentâ.
Mr. Beanâs beloved yellow Mini is probably just a tad more advanced
than Noddyâs car, but the real life Bean has an all-consuming passion
for racing cars - to which he escapes, from the acute stress of
wondering whether he got a scene right or not. Infact directors note
that Bean seldom enjoys his work, in his pursuit of the elusive âperfect
shotâ.
Today, with an estimated 65 million pounds, this enigmatic
millionaire can afford to call in sick - and take a couple of years off,
zooming around in one of his expensive cars - an easily affordable
hobby.
And that would be the biggest reason why a reluctant recluse like him
would let himself be forcibly flung under the spotlights (a comic scene
opener in all Mr. Bean episodes, as you will recall).
Hero in real life
While the âSunetra Sastryâ connection will be the curious Mr. Bean
trivia Indians will wonder about, thereâs enough evidence that sheâs the
big love of his life - and fiercely protective of her too. Hereâs a
dramatic but little known incident of the real Mr. Bean.
Flying over Kenya on a family holiday, the pilot of the Atkinsonâs
chartered Cessna suddenly passed out (apparently with acute
dehydration).
As the plane began to dangerously nose dive, Rowan took control - and
despite no flying experience - brought the plane back on course,
averting a terrifying disaster.
The pilot was later revived by his wife - and landed the plane safely
in Nairobi. An episode to make even avowed haters of the error-terror
Mr. Bean, stand up and clap.
Courtesy: The
Hindu |