Biography
Matthew Parkhill was raised in Leigh-On-Sea in Essex, where he had a fairly bucolic childhood. In his teens, he worked as a counselor at a summer camp for mentally disabled people, which inspired his debut novel "And I Loved Them Madly." When the book was optioned by a production company, he was hired to adapt it for the screen, despite having never written a screenplay before. Although the film never got off the ground, Parkhill discovered he had a talent for screenwriting and began producing short films. His 2003 feature debut, "Dot the I," was a well-received thriller starring Gael García Bernal, which had a number of unexpected twists and turns. He went on to write and direct several episodes of long-running British drama series "The Afternoon Play" before returning to the big screen with 2011's "The Caller," starring "True Blood"'s Stephen Moyer. This supernatural thriller about a young divorcee who receives mysterious threatening phone calls was a hit on the festival circuit. Parkhill currently has a number of projects in development, most notably a film about gay rugby player Gareth Thomas that has Mickey Rourke attached to star. He has had a long relationship with English actress and model Rachel Shelley, and the two have a daughter who was born in 2009.
