Tracey Seaward

Being an independent producer can lead one on many different roads, and the career of Tracey Seward was certainly a unique filmmaking journey. Seward not only worked with directors as diverse as Danny Boyle, David Cronenberg, Stephen Frears, and Steven Spielberg, but also had the ironic experience of making a movie about the Queen of England, then actually casting her in a famed short subject that played before the 2012 Olympics. Tracey Seaward was born in 1965 in Willerby, East Riding of Yorkshire. She was educated at Hull College, and also studied film and cultural studies at Trinity College in Leeds. Seward's first producing credit was the John Irvin film "Widow's Peak" (1994), which she then followed with "Nora," in which Ewan McGregor played James Joyce, and "Nothing Personal" (2009), directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan. Among the acclaimed directors Seward worked with were Neil Jordan on "The Good Thief" (2002); Stephen Frears on "Dirty Pretty Things" (2002); David Cronenberg on "eXistenZ" (1999) and "Eastern Promises" (2007); Danny Boyle with "Millions" (2004); and Steven Spielberg on "War Horse" (2011). Two other acclaimed films Seward produced included the thriller "The Constant Gardner" (2005), and "The Queen" (2006), which was one of the best-reviewed films of its year. For her performance as Queen Elizabeth, Helen Mirren won a whopping twenty-nine awards including the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the film was a hit at the box office as well. In 2012, Seward enjoyed the irony of casting the Queen herself, Queen Elizabeth II, in a comic cameo in "Happy and Glorious" (2012), a short film directed by Danny Boyle that played during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. In 2013, Seaward had another triumph producing "Philomena" (2013), the true story of a woman's fifty-year search to learn what happened to the son she had been forced to give up for adoption. "Philomena" was nominated for four Academy Awards, including a best actress nod for Judi Dench; the film also earned serious kudos for comedian Steve Coogan as a screenwriter and dramatic actor.