Biography

Justin Chadwick was born on December 1, 1968 in Manchester, Lancashire, England, UK. He is a director and actor, known for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013), The First Grader (2010) and Bleak House (2005).

When you talk to people now in their 80s and 90s who knew Mandela as a young man, they remember a brilliant lawyer and a fantastic orator, but they also remember a 'star'. He had a magnetism about him. He gave off electricity when he came into a room. Idris [Elba] can do that too - he has that warmth and radiance about him.

Mandela was very much alive and knew what we were doing when we were making the film. He himself has said he doesn't want to be remembered as a saint, he wants to be remembered as a man. And he was a man. He was a young man. He had hopes and ambitions and dreams that were just like any other young man who wanted to be the best of what he did, and have a family and children, and to be a great lawyer, and to be a success. And this pernicious evil - drip, drip, drip effect on him - it just did not stop. Everything I researched led back to this man, and what it cost him as a man, a flesh and blood man who was a dad who had hopes and dreams. I want my sons to go and watch that and see. I mean, isn't that what makes this journey all the more extraordinary?