Beany wonder

By Indu Balachandran

What you don’t know about the most rubber-faced man you know?

He brushes his teeth and changes his clothes—all while driving a car.

He looks smugly around his class—then realizes he’s prepared for the wrong exam

He tries everything, but falls hopelessly asleep in church.

IF these were clues in a quiz, you’d say at once “Mr Bean of course!”.

But look at this other set of clues:

He went to school with Tony Blair.

His biggest passion and hobby: fancy racing cars.

He’s married to a gorgeous Hindu woman, Sunetra Sastry.

Would you just as easily have guessed, “Rowan Atkinson!”?

Yes, these are the surprising facts about the rather private side of your beloved Mr. Bean (or the obnoxious Mr Bean, if you hated that episode of him running around naked in a posh hotel, for instance.)

But people in 95 countries (and travellers in 50 airlines) can’t seem to have enough of this rubber-faced wonder of blunders. Not just in manageable doses of 20-minute episodes, but even entire feature film lengths of him, as the success of the blockbusting “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” proves.

Reluctant comic

He went to school with Tony Blair.

Rowan Atkinson was born into an English farming family in 1955, and when he wasn’t making his classmates fall apart laughing with impersonations of teachers, he was taking apart all things mechanical, and enjoying putting them back. In fact in that very school was a young lad, Tony Blair — though Rowan only remembers him as ‘someone who smiled a lot’.

Rowan’s schoolday heroes were Buster Keaton and the French comedian Jacques Tati — and Rowan became obsessed with staging their skits — and yet managed to get excellent grades. And despite the many pranks he pulled on his hapless masters, it was his Headmaster who first advised Rowan to seriously consider a career in entertainment.

However Rowan believed his real interest was in engineering, topping his class with a Masters in Electronics. But everything was to change when he met the talented Richard Curtis — who drew him firmly into the path of show biz. Together, they would create path-breaking shows like “Not The Nine O’ Clock News”, the raucously funny “Black Adder” series and even “Mr. Bean”).

Rowan Atkinson was making waves as Britain’s funniest man, but once off the stage he would plunge into his private shy world, steering clear of interviews and publicity.

Family life

He’s married to a gorgeous Hindu woman, Sunetra Sastry.

Something that even affected his romance. He fell heavily in love with a very attractive BBC makeup artiste called Sunetra Sastry…but it took months to summon the courage to ask her for a date. What followed could well have made a Bean episode, as the meal was conducted in tongue-tied silence except for asking her to pass the ketchup. Then he suddenly disappeared to the men’s room and never returned for 15 minutes. Later he confessed that he broke his zipper and had to find a waiter with a safety pin.

Despite this Beany start, their romance deepened, and in 1990 they married in secret at a New York restaurant…without summoning the Father, The Son and the Holy Goat — (his best known line in Four Weddings and a Funeral.)

Rowan and Sunetra have two children but so fiercely guarded is he about his home life, that interviews have revealed nothing about his wife’s origins, except that she is probably part-Indian, and that she is a ‘British Hindu’. But when he does make his rare appearance on the red carpet, it’s with his drop-dead ravishing, dark-haired wife.

And behind the world’s most malleable face is another story — as a child, Rowan suffered from a bout of stuttering — with particular difficulty over the letter “B”. The struggle to get a word out often resulted in making the wildest faces — and as politically incorrect as it was — led to the first spontaneous bursts of laughter for his ‘talent’.

His biggest passion and hobby: fancy racing cars.

Mr. Bean’s beloved yellow Mini is probably just a tad more advanced than Noddy’s car, but the real life Bean has an all-consuming passion for racing cars — to which he escapes, from the acute stress of wondering whether he got a scene right or not. In fact directors note that Bean seldom enjoys his work, in his pursuit of the elusive ‘perfect shot’.

Today, with an estimated 65 million pounds, this enigmatic millionaire can afford to call in sick — and take a couple of years off, zooming around in one of his expensive cars — an easily affordable hobby. And that would be the biggest reason why a reluctant recluse like him would let himself be forcibly flung under the spotlights (a comic scene opener in all Mr. Bean episodes, as you will recall).

Hero in real life

While the ‘Sunetra Sastry” connection will be the most curious Mr. Bean trivia Indians will wonder about, there’s enough evidence that she’s the big love of his life—and fiercely protective of her too. Here’s a dramatic but little known incident of the real Mr. Bean…

Flying over Kenya on a family holiday, the pilot of the Atkinsons’ chartered Cessna suddenly passed out (apparently with acute dehydration). As the plane began to dangerously nose dive, Rowan took control — and despite no flying experience — brought the plane back on course, averting a terrifying disaster. The pilot was later revived by his wife — and landed the plane safely in Nairobi.

An episode to make even avowed haters of the error-terror Mr. Bean, stand up and clap.

(The Hindu, Magazine: 10.06.2007- with little alterations)

________________________________________________