Lawnside 1974 Leaver

Phyllida Lloyd is an award winning theatre, opera and film director. She has worked at The National Theatre (The Way of The World, The Duchess of Malfi, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and What the Butler Saw), The Royal Court (Six Degrees of Separation, Hysteria, Wild East) and The Donmar Warehouse (The Threepenny Opera, The Boston Marriage, Mary Stuart (also West End and Broadway)). She produced The Shakespeare Trilogy for The Donmar (London and New York) and Josephine and I (London and New York).

Opera productions include Gloriana, La Boheme, Medea, Albert Herring, Peter Grimes and Carmen for Opera North. Also Macbeth for the Royal Opera House and Paris Opera; and The Carmelites, Verdi’s Requiem, The Handmaid’s Tale and Wagner’s Ring for English National Opera.

She directed Mamma Mia! on stage and screen and most recently Tina the musical at the Aldwych. She also directed the film The Iron Lady which won Meryl Streep her third Oscar.

Her screen recordings of her Donmar productions of Julius Caesar, The Tempest and Henry IV have recently been made specially available for use as a learning/teaching aid in secondary schools.

Phyllida has been nominated for Olivier, BAFTA and Tony Awards and received The Philharmonic Society, Southbank and Emmy awards. In 2005 she was the Cameron Macintosh Visiting Professor at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and in 2009 was awarded a CBE for her services to Drama.

What is your best advice?

Don’t try to solve everything at once. The solution will come but it may not come until the last inch.

What does success look like to you?

When much younger colleagues, with whom I have collaborated over the past six years, fly the nest, begin to soar in their new careers and become mentors themselves.