After a stint in theatre administration at Riverside Studios, Rebecca O’Brien (born 1957) took a one-week film production course and fell headlong into production. She worked on early Channel Four films and dramas including My Beautiful Laundrette (as Location Manager). Her feature film producing debut was Friendship’s Death written and directed by Peter Wollen and starring Tilda Swinton and Bill Paterson. Her first film with Ken Loach was Hidden Agenda (1990) and since then they have made eighteen feature films together including My Name Is Joe, The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I Daniel Blake, as well as many other documentaries and shorts. In 2002 they formed Sixteen Films. Apart from the Loach/Laverty films, Rebecca also produced the Bean movie with Rowan Atkinson for Working Title, Princesa for Parallax Pictures, City of Tiny Lights for Sixteen Films and has executive produced for Camilla Bray, Ian Knox and Henrique Goldman. In 2016 she produced Versus – the Life and Films of Ken Loach. Rebecca has sat on various film industry boards including PACT, the European Film Academy, the UK Film Council and Southwest Screen. She is currently a board member of the British Screen Advisory Council.
