David Yates

As a skilled craftsman, creating stories of modern intrigue and corruption, director David Yates made the rare jump from working on acclaimed, edgy television projects in his native England to overseeing one of the world's most anticipated Hollywood blockbusters. After a decade-plus-long journey which ultimately brought him to the forefront of small screen drama, Yates hit his stride with the arresting political tales "State of Play" (2003) and "Sex Traffic" (2004) - two unlikely British miniseries whose timelines coincided with the bleaker happenings in the world of "Harry Potter." The famous child-wizard series of hit films catapulted the then internationally-unknown Yates into the director's chair of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2008).

Yates was born in 1963 in the Merseyside town of St. Helens. From an early age, he was already gravitating towards his future profession, fascinated by the movies of ambitious film directors like David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Ken Loach, with Spielberg's "Jaws" (1974) and Christian Nyby's "The Thing From Another World" (1951) two favorites in particular. Yates went to see "Jaws" in the theater, where at least a dozen of his subsequent 35 viewings took place. While at the theater, Yates attempted to gleam insights into the production and story elements, observing the characterization, pacing and suspense and with each viewing, surveying the reactions of the audience. He began pulling friends and family into the cast of short films at the age of 14, using a camera his mother had given him. Yates followed up on a more academic track, taking up the subjects of sociology, political studies, and literature at St Helens College before moving onto the University of Essex.

Living in Swindon in the late 1980s, Yates became a freelancer for Create Studios, whose facilities helped him make his first serious film, the short "When I Was a Girl" (1988) - also aided along through grant funding from Southern Arts. The short, a story of a young girl trapped in an unhappy family life and on the cusp of sexual discovery following World War II, later made the festival circuit and helped with his acceptance into the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, where he studied under its directing program. "When I Was a Girl" also marked Yates' entry into the UK's entertainment industry, as his skilled handling of the material won him an audience with BBC, which before he had even graduated, hired him to make the dramatic short "Oranges and Lemons" (1991).

From 1994-95, Yates cut his teeth on the gritty ITV police series "The Bill" (1984- ), which took a serious look into the day-to-day lives of both the uniformed officers and detectives of London's Metropolitan Police Department. He directed several episodes of the long-running series, before moving into directing his first feature film, a small independent called "The Tichborne Claimant" (1998). Shot in Merseyside and on the Isle of Man, the film was an account of the real story of Andrew Bogle, a servant in Victorian England who is given the task of finding the missing Tichborne heir that had allegedly washed up on Australian shores.

Yates soon returned to television to helm several episodes of BBC's miniseries, "The Sins" (2000), a drama about a retired thief-turned-family man tempted by an easy chance to return to crime. He then helmed a faithful adaptation of Anthony Trollope's satire "The Way We Live Now" (2001), a miniseries featuring David Suchet as the mysterious, shady businessman Melmotte, whose arrival and rise in London high society soon stirs both optimism and suspicion. Yates, writer Andrew Davies and producer Nigel Stafford-Clark all shared a BAFTA Award win for "Best Drama Serial." One year later, Yates was back with a nomination for the short film, "Rank." Made with the assistance of the London Production Fund, "Rank" examined the racial and cultural divide in Scotland between a group of Somalian refugees and street kids from Glasgow.

The cache of awards now under his belt, the projects grew loftier. With the BBC miniseries "State of Play" (2003), Yates' mastery of craft was emerging at its most dynamic. His ability to weave suspense and tension together produced a six-part thriller, scripted by veteran writer Paul Abbott, about the unraveling of a politician after a series of murders - one of a random criminal; the other, of his own research assistant. The taut series captivated critics and audiences of the genre, as well as numerous awards voters. Both Yates and Abbott were part of the nominated group at the 2004 BAFTA Awards - Yates' third consecutive trip.

"State of Play" became a major turning point for Yates' career prospects, propelling him forward into a series of other well-made, critically-acclaimed efforts. Acclaimed actor Jim Broadbent himself received a BAFTA nomination under Yates' direction of "The Young Visiters" (2003), based on the Daisy Ashford short story of a bumbling man trying to improve his social graces for the love of a high society woman. In the fall of 2004, Yates unveiled the two-part series, "Sex Traffic," a carefully-plotted, intertwined set of stories about two Romanian women sold into a sex slavery operation spanning Eastern Europe and London. Told in a stark, frank manner, the project made waves in both the UK and Canada, both of which bankrolled the production. An awards favorite in both countries, "Sex Traffic" netted Yates his second BAFTA Award and brought him a directing nomination from the Director's Guild of Great Britain (DGGB).

By 2005, Yates' prestige projects continued to move him beyond the UK market. He won an Emmy Award nomination in 2006 for his helming of ace screenwriter Richard Curtis' Emmy Award-winning script for the gentle romantic comedy, "Girl in the Caf?" (2005). A UK/US collaboration between BBC and HBO, the film saw an older political researcher - "State of Play" star Bill Nighy - strike up a strange coffee shop connection with a young woman (Kelly Macdonald), which blossoms into a tentative romance during the G-8 Summit in Iceland. By now, Yates' many accolades were enough to start landing him on the short hiring lists of Hollywood.

The possibility of a "Harry Potter" film assignment loomed in Yates' future, as Warner Brothers began developing its fifth film of J.K. Rowling's corresponding novel series, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." He had been developing a version of Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited in 2004 for the studio's art house division, Warner Independent Pictures, with husband-and-wife actors Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connolly negotiating to play the leads, but after finally landing the highly-coveted "Potter" job and with budget issues stalling "Brideshead," Yates transitioned into his new assignment. As the "Harry Potter" books entered into increasingly dangerous terrain, the studio knew Yates had a strong visual style and that his realistic sense of the political would add the necessary dramatic weight the fifth installment required. Yates, who had not read the books, began pouring through them.

In "Order of the Phoenix," a dwindling confidence in Harry Potter's tales of Voldemort led to the usurping of Dumbledore's authority at Hogwarts Academy by the Ministry of Magic itself. The director wrapped 2005 in pre-production mode, spending most of 2006 filming with his cast before working on the special effects - all with an eye towards the movie's summer 2007 release. A ready-made international franchise with high expectations and a cost well over $100 million, it was, like Voldemort himself, the biggest challenge Yates would face.