Willy Russell

Willy Russell’s background 

Willy Russell is an English dramatist best known for Educating Rita(1986). He was born in Liverpool in 1947 to a working class family, his dad worked in a factory and his mam was a nurse and then worked in a warehouse. After he left school he became a hairdresser and took other odd jobs, such as working in a warehouse. He said being a hairdresser was, “a job I didn’t understand and didn’t like,” and he began to write songs and sketches for the media because writing was the “only thing I felt I understood, felt that I could do.” When he was twenty he returned to college, and graduated, then he became became a teacher. He paid for his education by working a job cleaning machinery. It was dangerous so he only stayed long enough to make his money.  

His first play, Keep Your Eyes Down, which he wrote while training to become a teacher, was produced in 1971. John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert was really popular, running for eight straight weeks at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, it won the Evening Standard and London Theatre Critic Award for best musical in 1974.  

Educating Rita was first staged in 1980 and published in 1981. Shirley valentine was staged in 1988, and both that play and Educating Rita were made into popular films that were nominated for Academy Awards.  

Russell also writes for television and composes songs, such as the lyrics and score for blood brothers, (1986), a musical about twins separated at birth. His screenplays for film and his writing for television are quite different. Russell published his first novel, The Wrong Boy, in 2000. He currently lives and works in Liverpool. In 1969 he married Anne Seagroatt and had  three children.