Alain de Botton
Acting
Biography
No biography available for Alain de Botton.
Born: December 20, 1969
Place of Birth: Zurich, Switzerland
Known For
Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting
The history of still life painting with oil paints
Status Anxiety
Social status in a capitalistic society is a major factor in how people live their lives. This social status greatly revolves around a person’s financial status. This film examines how the quest to move up the social ladder has brought untold depression and anxieties about ones self.
Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness
Alain de Botton's psychobabble-free self-help course for the philosophically minded.
Skavlan
Skavlan is a Norwegian-Swedish television talk show hosted by Norwegian journalist Fredrik Skavlan. It premiered in Sweden on Sveriges Television in January 2009, and the first guests to appear on the show were former Prime Minister of Sweden Göran Persson and his wife Anitra Steen. On 8 May 2009, it was announced that Skavlan had been renewed for a second season. It was also announced that the show would no longer only be produced by SVT in Sweden; Skavlan would now be partly produced in Norway by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The first twelve episodes of Skavlan's second season were produced by SVT in Sweden, and the remaining twelve by NRK in Norway. Skavlan speaks Norwegian and his dialog is therefore subtitled in Swedish in Sweden, even though the two languages are quite similar and mutually intelligible. If the persons being interviewed by Skavlan are Swedish, he often tells them to let him know if they do not understand what he is saying. Swedish novelist Jan Guillou has criticized SVT for subtitling the program, stating "there is no need for that. If the host had been Danish, subtitling would have been necessary, but with a Norwegian host it does not make any sense."
How Proust Can Change Your Life
A docu-drama portrait of the early-20th-century French author Marcel Proust, based on Alain de Botton's updated analysis of his work as a modern-day self-help guide. Ralph Fiennes plays Proust, with Phyllida Law and Donald Sinden as his contemporaries, while commentators including de Botton, Louis de Bernières and Doris Lessing explain their enthusiasm for his work.
The Perfect Home
Based on Alain de Botton's book The Architecture of Happiness.
Why It Is So Hard to Live in the Present?
The period of time we find hardest to inhabit is the present; for a range of powerful reasons we should take on board.
The Perfect Home
The Perfect Home is a television series of three 42 minute episodes commissioned for Channel 4 based on the book The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton which first aired in 2006. In the programmes, Alain de Botton explored the importance of innovative architecture for homes. He offered criticism of modern developments that build in an idealized fake heritage style, which he referred to as pastiche, often referring back to the example of Great Notley Garden Village near Braintree, Essex. The first programme looks at how the current status quo came about where volume builders are typically building houses with architectural styles harking back to pre-industrial eras such as mock Tudor, neo-Georgian and mock country cottage façades. The second looks at what defines a building's beauty, drawing parallels with the differences between the Catholic and Protestant ideals in their respective places of worship, suggesting the comparison was a trade off between decoration versus a more utilitarian approach. The third programme looks at how the current situation could be improved, with de Botton's preferred option being that buildings' architecture should reflect the era in which they are built. To this end, he approached Bellway Homes with examples of more contemporary designs being used on in The Netherlands as a suggested alternative. Bellway's reaction was quite positive, and they have incorporated more contemporary designs into their Ravenswood development on the former Ipswich Airport site in Suffolk.
Filmography
as narrator
as Self - Guest
as self
as Himself
as Himself