Before becoming a man capable of making millions of people laugh almost without talking, Rowan Atkinson studied electrical engineering in Oxford. Then he creates a character that just takes 15 episodes to become immortal.
Rowan Atkinson was born in England in 1955 and his future, at least initially, seems far from television.
He studied electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Newcastle and subsequently studied at Queen’s College in Oxford, where he obtained a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
He could have become an engineer.
But just during the years of Oxford something completely changes the direction of his life.
Atkinson starts attending university shows and knows screenwriter Richard Curtis. Among the two was a collaboration destined to become fundamental for the British comedy.
However, there is a particular seemingly little compatible with a career ahead of the public.
Atkinson stutter.
However, when he interprets a character, that difficulty almost disappears.
That's how the radio, the theater, and then the television.
Not the Nine O’Clock News arrives first.
Then Blackadder, the series in which he interprets various incarnations of Edmund Blackadder and which contributes to consecrating him as one of the great British comedians of his generation.
But the character destined to make it famous all over the world is very different.
He speaks very little.
His name is Mr. Bean.
Atkinson has long worked on the idea of a comedy that does not depend too much on words.
The principle is simple as difficult to achieve: if the joke is entrusted to a dialogue, often it must be translated. But if it comes from a look, from a movement or an absurd situation, it can be almost everywhere.
The face becomes part of the script.
A break can be a joke.
A walk can prepare a gag.
An embarrassed expression can replace entire lines of dialogue.
In the construction of that comedy, Atkinson also looks at the tradition of the great interpreters of the genre, including Jacques Tati.
The first episode of Mr. Bean is broadcast on 1 January 1990.
From that moment on, normal situations become ground for chaos.
An exam.
Lunch.
A day out.
A turkey.
In Mr.'s hands. Bean any daily gesture can turn into a catastrophe.
And this is where one of the most amazing numbers of his story emerges.
The original television series has just 15 episodes.
Fifteen.
Yet they are enough to build a recognizable character in most of the world.
Precisely the lack of language dependence gives Mr. Bean a huge advantage: it can cross cultural and linguistic boundaries much more easily than a comedy built mainly on dialogues.
Then come films, specials, animated series and endless replicas. Then the Internet gives new life to the character, making it known to generations who were not even born when the original series was broadcast.
Rowan Atkinson has been circulating impressive numbers for years about his alleged intellectual quotient, often referred to as 171 or even 178.
However, there are no reliable sources that confirm those figures.
And they don't need it.
His academic training is real and documented: before becoming a world star of comedy, Atkinson seriously studies electrical engineering in Newcastle and Oxford.
Perhaps that’s why behind Mr. Bean’s apparent chaos there is something much less casual than it looks.
Every silence must last long enough.
Every movement must arrive at the right time.
Each expression must prepare the next one.
Mr. Bean seems like a man unable to control what happens to him.
Rowan Atkinson, on the other hand, builds behind that character every detail with almost engineering precision.
Today Atkinson is 71 and Mr. Bean continues to be recognized and loved by very different generations.
And maybe this is the most incredible data of his story: just 15 episodes of the original series were enough to create a character who, more than thirty years later, continues to make the world laugh.