Nick Park is the stop-motion animator who has won four Oscars for films featuring absent-minded inventor Wallace and his vigilant dog, Gromit. Park was a student at the National Film and Television School when he met Peter Lord and David Sproxton of Aardman Animations. He joined their studio in 1985 and worked on TV commercials while polishing
A Grand Day Out, his first short film with Wallace and Gromit. Shown in 1990 on BBC, the film became an international hit and was nominated for an Oscar the next year. It lost to
another short film by Park,
Creature Comforts (1989), but since then Park has picked up Oscars for the Wallace & Gromit short films
The Wrong Trousers (1993) and
A Close Shave (1995), and for the feature
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). Aardman Animations, with Lord and Park at the helm, also made the animated feature
Chicken Run, a box office smash that had the voice talents of
Mel Gibson and
Imelda Staunton. Park's other work includes a 2003 series that extended the idea behind
Creature Comforts (man-on-the-street interviews synched with stop-motion animation), and
Shaun the Sheep, a BBC series that started in 2007.
Copyright © 1998-2012 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.