Tom Harper is a British film and television director. He is best known for his work on Wild Rose, Peaky Blinders, and the BBC TV mini-series War & Peace. Tom Harper grew up in a Quaker family. He "credits Quakerism with setting the tone in his attitudes towards pacifism and non-violence."
Career
Harper began his career making short films. He wrote and directed Cubs in 2006 about urban fox hunting which was nominated for a BAFTA in the Best Short Film category and won a BIFA. Harper then moved on to direct a range of film and television work which includes Misfits, The Scouting Book for Boys , This Is England '86, The Borrowers, Peaky Blinders and . The Scouting Book for Boys was filmed throughout September and October 2008. In 2014, Harper re-teamed with Jack Thorne, the writer of The Scouting Book for Boys, to make War Book, which premiered at the London Film Festival and had its international premiere as the opening film of the International Festival of Film Rotterdam. The film received critical acclaim with The List calling it a "powerful, provocative and essential piece of modern British cinema". Harper was also a producer on the film. He directed the 2016 BBC TV mini-seriesWar & Peace, starring Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton for BBC1 and The Weinstein Company. The series topped ratings and won rave reviews. The series was nominated for 6 BAFTAs and won for Best Production Design. Harper next directed the pilot episode of The Son for AMC based on Phillip Meyer's acclaimed novel. Pierce Brosnan played the lead, replacing Sam Neill who was forced to pull out due to personal reasons. The series was picked up for a second season in May 2017. In 2017, Harper teamed up with Jack Thorne once again, to make "The Commuter" starring Timothy Spall, the third episode of the Channel 4/Amazon Video anthology seriesPhilip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. Viewers called the episode "a masterpiece" and the best of the season so far. Wild Rose starring Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters, and written by Nicole Taylor was filmed in Glasgow, Scotland and Nashville, USA in the summer of 2017. The film received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival where Owen Gleiberman described it in Variety as "a happy-sad drama of starstruck fever that lifts you up and sweeps you along, touching you down in a puddle of well-earned tears." The Aeronauts, based on James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's famous 1862 flight, and starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones started its shoot in the summer of 2018. The script was written by Jack Thorne, their fifth collaboration. Harper produced with Todd Lieberman for Amazon Studios. As of March 2020 The Aeronauts is the most watched film of all time on Amazon Prime
