English playwright and screenwriter Stephen Beresford was BOTD in 1972. Born in London, he was raised in Dartmouth in rural Devon. He showed an early interest in drama, moving to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After several years of unemployment, punctuated by walk-on roles in TV drama serials The Bill, Casualty and Midsomer Murders, he abandoned acting and turned to playwriting. His first full-length play, The Last of the Haussmans, a Chekhovian drama about two adult siblings dealing with their cantankerous hippy mother, was produced by the National Theatre in 2012, starring Julie Walters and Helen McCrory. It became a critical and box office hit, earning Beresford a slew of industry award nominations. In 2014, he wrote the screenplay for the film Pride, dramatising the unlikely alliance between lesbian and gay activists in 1980s Thatcherite Britain who raise money to support striking Welsh coal miners. Filmed in 2014 by Matthew Warchus and starring Beresford’s then-boyfriend Andrew Scott, Pride premiered at the Cannes Festival, where it won the Queer Palm for best LGBT feature. Beresford’s other produced works include a stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexander; the screenplay for Tolkien, a 2019 biopic of Lord of the Rings writer J. R. R. Tolkien; and the 2020 play The Southbury Child, a drama about a vicar undergoing a mid-life crisis. His forthcoming projects include a West End musical adaptation of Pride, and the screenplay for Elsinore, a biopic about gay actor Ian Charleson, starring Scott as Charleson. Beresford lives in London; his current relationship status is unknown.