Welsh director Sean Mathias was BOTD in 1956. Born in Swansea, he began his professional career as an actor, taking small roles in the films Priest of Love, The Scarlet Pimpernel and White Mischief. He began writing plays and screenplays in the 1980s, earning acclaim for his 1992 TV adaptation of David Leavitt‘s gay-themed novel The Lost Language of Cranes. He rose to fame directing the 1989 West End revival of Bent, Martin Sherman’s play about gay victims of Nazi Germany, starring Ian Charleson and Mathias’ then-boyfriend Ian McKellen. In 1997, Mathias adapted and directed a film version starring Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau and McKellen. His 1995 Broadway production of Indiscretions made a star of Jude Law and earned nine Tony Award nominations. He continued with a celebrated revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music starring Judi Dench, and successful West End and Broadway productions of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, Strindberg’s Dance of Death and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, all starring McKellen. Now resident in South Africa, he married his husband Paul de Lange in 2007. He also co-owns a pub in London’s East End with McKellen.