Ian Sharp
British television director (born 1946)
James Ian Sharp (born 13 November 1946, Clitheroe, Lancashire) is an English film and television director. He is best known for directing the SAS action thriller Who Dares Wins (1982) and Robin of Sherwood (1984) as well as directing the action sequences of the James Bond film Goldeneye (1995).
Life and career
Sharp was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn and Durham University (Hatfield College) where he gained an honours degree in Psychology and Modern Philosophy in 1968. During the 1970s, he worked at the BBC making documentaries first for the General Features Department and then for Music and Arts, especially Arena and Omnibus. In 1978, the BBC gave him 3 months sabbatical to make a movie called The Music Machine, and it was this experience that led him to turn towards drama. His first break came in 1980 with the ITV comedy drama series Minder. The way Sharp directed a fight sequence for an episode of Minder brought him to the attention of the producers of The Professionals. He made a total of 6 episodes for those two series.
Shortly after that, he directed Who Dares Wins (1982), his second feature film, for producer Euan Lloyd. Who Dares Wins was perceived by some as a right-wing film and Sharp says he lost career opportunities because of this.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ian Sharp” as british television director (born 1946). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british television director (born 1946). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1640718. VIAF identifies the subject as 21768334. The Library of Congress control number is no98118205. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1982, 1984 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ian Sharp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.