Most people know Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. The rubber face, the battered Mini, the teddy bear. What most people do not know is that away from the camera he is a quietly serious man with a degree in electrical engineering from Oxford, a deep appreciation for craftsmanship, and one of the most interesting car collections in Britain.
He has owned a McLaren F1. Twice crashed it. Twice had it repaired. The second repair alone cost around £910,000, making it one of the most expensive insurance claims in UK history. He kept the car and eventually sold it in 2015 for $12.2 million, turning what looked like a disaster into one of the better automotive investments of the last thirty years.
The car obsession runs deep. He has raced competitively at events including the Goodwood Festival of Speed and various circuit days across Britain. He has owned Aston Martins, Bentleys, classic Jaguars, and a Porsche 944 he campaigned in club racing for years. He has written about cars for automotive publications. He is, by any measure, a serious enthusiast rather than a collector who parks things in a climate-controlled garage and never drives them.
The style is worth a look too. Young Atkinson in the 1980s had a very specific kind of English eccentricity about how he dressed. Corduroy trousers, heavyweight coats, the occasional tuxedo worn with real ease, sweater vests over check shirts with aviator sunglasses. It was never fashion-conscious but it was always considered. The kind of dressing that comes from someone who knows what they like and does not particularly care what you think about it.
He studied electrical engineering before pivoting entirely to comedy, which explains more about how his comedy works than most people realise. The physical precision of Mr. Bean, the timing, the calibration of exactly how long a scene runs before the punchline, all of it has an engineering logic underneath. There is very little accident in what looks completely accidental.