Richard Eyre is a theatre director, writer and former Artistic Director of the National Theatre (a position he held from 1988 to 1997).
He worked for ten years in regional theatre in Leicester, Edinburgh and Nottingham (where he commissioned and directed Trevor Griffiths's Comedians, which later transferred to London and Broadway), and then became producer of BBC TV's Play for Today. In London his theatre work as adapter includes his versions of Jennifer Dawson's novel The Ha Ha, Sartre's Les Mains Sales, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Ghosts at the Almeida Theatre and the West End. His original play, The Snail House, was staged at Hampstead Theatre in 2022.
He became Artistic Director of the National Theatre in 1988, and has directed numerous productions there, including Guys and Dolls, The Beggar's Opera, Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear, Night of the Iguan