JAMES ANTHONY PEARSON
James is passionate about telling stories that reflect diverse experiences and underrepresented voices, especially from within the LGBTQ community. James grew up in Bradford in West Yorkshire before moving to Scotland where he currently lives with his partner and their two sons. He began his career as an actor and is best known for playing Bernard Sumner in Anton Corbijn's cult classic film Control.
He turned to screenwriting in 2016, with his original screenplay Stan and May being selected for the EIFF Talent Lab. His debut feature film Making Noise - about deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie - is being directed by Hope Dickson Leach and is due for production in 2025 with Morfydd Clark and Hero Fiennes Tiffin attached to play the leads. Other projects currently in development include My Life in Art - a comedy about an art commissioner with money to spend but the creativity of a brick (for Channel X Hopscotch), and The Matchmaker - an original drama series about a 1950s housewife who leaves her toxic marriage to set up a dating agency (for Studio Crook).
James is an alumnus of the BBC Writers room Drama Writers program, and part of Scottish Voices 2019 (also for BBC writers room). He has a degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Edinburgh, and is a proud graduate of Angela DeCastro’s seminal clowning course How To Be A Stupid.