David Hare

Writing

David Hare

Born 1947-06-05 · St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, England, UK

Acting credits

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold poster
7.4

Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne.

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold

2017

Joe Papp in Five Acts poster
4.5

Joe Papp, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival and, subsequently, The Public Theater—arguably the most important theatre in North America—is profiled in this documentary that neither sanctifies nor vilifies him. He brought us free Shakespeare in the Park, Hair and A Chorus Line, and nurtured many of America’s greatest playwrights, directors and actors. His complex personality and mercurial behavior are much in evidence and spoken of with frankness through interviews with some of America’s most celebrated artists, including Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline, and James Earl Jones.

Joe Papp in Five Acts

2012

Alan Clarke: His Own Man poster
8.0

British film-maker Alan Clarke was championed by the likes of Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Ray Winstone - Stephen Frears even called him the best. And yet Clarke only ever made 3 feature films. This documentary explores the life and career of an exceptional director - Alan Clarke.

Alan Clarke: His Own Man

2000

Judi Dench: All the World's Her Stage poster
7.8

This documentary celebrates one of Britain’s greatest actors, Dame Judi Dench, and looks back over her remarkable 60-year career.

Judi Dench: All the World's Her Stage

2016

Alan Clarke: Out of His Own Light poster
NR

A multi-part documentary about Alan Clarke, featuring interviews with various actors, writers and producers.

Alan Clarke: Out of His Own Light

2016

Wall poster
4.0

Writer David Hare explores the reality of the wall separating Israel and Palestine.

Wall

2017

Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today poster
NR

Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.

Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today

2020

Via Dolorosa poster
8.0

In this one-man Broadway production directed for the stage by Stephen Daldry, acclaimed screenwriter-playwright David Hare recounts his eye-opening journey to Israel and Palestine.

Via Dolorosa

2000

Lee Miller: A Crazy Way of Seeing poster
NR

Documentary charting the fascinating life and work of Lee Miller, a model for Vogue in 1920s New York who became the only female photojournalist to cover the Second World War. Having given up photography in later life and virtually disowned her own work, Miller's extraordinary archive of 40,000 negatives was only rediscovered after her death. George Melly, David Hare, friends, colleagues and her only son, Tony Penrose, trace the story of her unconventional life through her own remarkable pictures and photographs, as well as rarely seen archive footage.

Lee Miller: A Crazy Way of Seeing

2001

Art, Truth and Politics poster
NR

Nobel Lecture delivered on video by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature Harold Pinter (1930–2008), who was at the time hospitalised and unable to travel to Stockholm to deliver it in person.

Art, Truth and Politics

2005

The Heritage poster
NR

British horror short from 1962.

The Heritage

1962

Behind the camera

The Reader poster
7.5

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

The Reader

2008

Damage poster
6.6

The life of a respected British politician at the height of his career crumbles when he becomes obsessed with his son's lover.

Damage

1992

The Hours poster
7.2

The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

The Hours

2002

Page Eight poster
6.6

Johnny is a long-serving MI5 officer. His boss dies suddenly, leaving behind an inexplicable file which threatens the stability of the organisation.

Page Eight

2011

Page Eight poster
6.6

Johnny is a long-serving MI5 officer. His boss dies suddenly, leaving behind an inexplicable file which threatens the stability of the organisation.

Page Eight

2011

The White Crow poster
6.6

The story of Rudolf Nureyev, whose escape to the West stunned the world at the height of the Cold War. With his magnetic presence, Nureyev emerged as ballet’s most famous star, a wild and beautiful dancer limited by the world of 1950s Leningrad. His flirtation with Western artists and ideas led him into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the KGB.

The White Crow

2018

Turks & Caicos poster
6.3

The second movie in David Hare's Johnny Worricker trilogy. Loose-limbed spy Johnny Worricker, last seen whistleblowing at MI5 in Page Eight, has a new life. He is hiding out in Ray-Bans on the Caribbean islands of the title, eating lobster and calling himself Tom Eliot (he’s a poet at heart). We’re drawn into his world and his predicament when Christopher Walken strolls in as a shadowy American who claims to know Johnny. The encounter forces him into the company of some ambiguous American businessmen who claim to be on the islands for a conference on the global financial crisis. When one of them falls in the sea, their financial PR seems to know more than she's letting on. Worricker soon learns the extent of their shady activities and he must act quickly to survive when links to British prime minister Alec Beasley come to light.

Turks & Caicos

2014

Turks & Caicos poster
6.3

The second movie in David Hare's Johnny Worricker trilogy. Loose-limbed spy Johnny Worricker, last seen whistleblowing at MI5 in Page Eight, has a new life. He is hiding out in Ray-Bans on the Caribbean islands of the title, eating lobster and calling himself Tom Eliot (he’s a poet at heart). We’re drawn into his world and his predicament when Christopher Walken strolls in as a shadowy American who claims to know Johnny. The encounter forces him into the company of some ambiguous American businessmen who claim to be on the islands for a conference on the global financial crisis. When one of them falls in the sea, their financial PR seems to know more than she's letting on. Worricker soon learns the extent of their shady activities and he must act quickly to survive when links to British prime minister Alec Beasley come to light.

Turks & Caicos

2014

Salting the Battlefield poster
6.3

David Hare concludes his trilogy of films about MI5 renegade Johnny Worricker with another fugue on power, secrets and the British establishment. Johnny Worricker goes on the run with Margot Tyrell across Europe, and with the net closing in, the former MI5 man knows his only chance of resolving his problems is to return home and confront prime minister Alec Beasley.

Salting the Battlefield

2014

Salting the Battlefield poster
6.3

David Hare concludes his trilogy of films about MI5 renegade Johnny Worricker with another fugue on power, secrets and the British establishment. Johnny Worricker goes on the run with Margot Tyrell across Europe, and with the net closing in, the former MI5 man knows his only chance of resolving his problems is to return home and confront prime minister Alec Beasley.

Salting the Battlefield

2014

Denial poster
6.8

Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel.

Denial

2016

Plenty poster
5.7

David Hare's account of a one-time French freedom fighter who gradually realizes that her post-war life is not meeting her expectations.

Plenty

1985

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Winds of Change poster
5.8

Following World War I, Indy - now fluent in several languages - works as a translator at the controversial Paris Peace Conference, where he once more meets Lawrence of Arabia, and encounters the Arab Prince Faisal and a young Ho Chi Minh. Disillusioned by the hard and cynical realpolitik of international deal-making, he returns home to Princeton, New Jersey after a three-year absence, where he finds his father as cold and distant as ever, and discovers a detrimental change in his boyhood friend, Paul Robeson, caused by bigotry.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Winds of Change

2000

Paris by Night poster
4.8

Clara Bell is a busy Euro MP with a husband and child at home and a high powered career - but on a trip to Paris her ordered existence is overturned by a murder and a chance encounter.

Paris by Night

1989

Paris by Night poster
4.8

Clara Bell is a busy Euro MP with a husband and child at home and a high powered career - but on a trip to Paris her ordered existence is overturned by a murder and a chance encounter.

Paris by Night

1989

Heading Home poster
6.0

The story of a woman who falls in love with two very different men in post World War II London.

Heading Home

1991

Teeth 'N' Smiles poster
NR

Before the New York Dolls. Before Debbie Harry. Before Kurt Cobain. There was Maggie Frisby. Once the roaring voice of 1960s counterculture, now broke and disillusioned, a band's youthful dreams of anarchic rebellion collapse into bitterness. Amidst the wreckage, lead singer Maggie tears through the night fuelled by booze, fury, and a voice that refuses to die. Over 50 years after David Hare's trailblazing play set the Royal Court Theatre in London alight in 1975, Teeth 'N' Smiles is burning things down all over again. The ship is sinking but the music remains the same. A play with original music starring Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem), Michael Fox (Downton Abbey), and Phil Daniels (Cock, Quadrophenia). Written by David Hare (Grace Pervades, The Hours, The Reader), and directed by Daniel Raggett (Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Anna X), performed live at The Duke Of York's Theatre in London from March 13 to June 6, 2026.

Teeth 'N' Smiles

2026

My Zinc Bed poster
4.4

A recovering alcoholic becomes involved with his boss's wife, a former cocaine addict.

My Zinc Bed

2008

Brassneck poster
9.0

Through the story of a single family, Brassneck traces a history that parallels the Labour Party's advent to power in 1945 through to the property speculation of the 1960s and the disillusionment with the Labour government in the early 1970s. Like most of the early work of the writers, David Hare and Howard Brenton, committed radical (if not revolutionary) socialists throughout the 1970s, it is a satirical attack on capitalist greed and corruption, full of savage, and often disturbing, humour.

Brassneck

1975

Wetherby poster
6.0

The mysterious death of an enigmatic young man newly arrived in the suburb of Wetherby releases the long-repressed, dark passions of some of its residents.

Wetherby

1985

Wetherby poster
6.0

The mysterious death of an enigmatic young man newly arrived in the suburb of Wetherby releases the long-repressed, dark passions of some of its residents.

Wetherby

1985

Licking Hitler poster
NR

1941 and the upper class Anna Seaton is hired as part of an allied radio propaganda project, creating disinformation about the Nazi war effort. But tensions between her and brilliant, working class writer Archie MacLean threaten to undermine her work.

Licking Hitler

1978

Licking Hitler poster
NR

1941 and the upper class Anna Seaton is hired as part of an allied radio propaganda project, creating disinformation about the Nazi war effort. But tensions between her and brilliant, working class writer Archie MacLean threaten to undermine her work.

Licking Hitler

1978

The Designated Mourner poster
5.6

Jack and Judy are husband and wife, and Howard is Judy's father. They live in some fictional undemocratic and repressive country, and tell us a story about their lives, mostly from Jack's point of view.

The Designated Mourner

1997