Joe Penhall is a writer. Born in London in 1967, he was called "one of the finest playwrights of his generation" by the Financial Times.

He won the Laurence Olivier Award, The Evening Standard Award and the Critics' Circle Award for Blue/Orange, a play about a young black schizophrenic man, which premiered at the National Theatre in 2000, starring Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Blue/Orange went to London's West End in 2001. The Laurence Olivier Awards, previously known as The Society of West End Theatre Awards, were renamed in honour of British actor Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier in 1984, having first been established in 1976. ... Bill Nighy (born December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey) is a British actor. ... Andrew Lincoln (14 September 1973) is a British actor. ... Chiwetel Ejiofor (born in 1976) is a British actor. ...

Penhall adapted Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love for a 2004 film starring Rhys Ifans, and wrote the screenplay for BBC2's four-part dramatisation of Jake Arnott's acclaimed East-End gangster novel The Long Firm. Ian McEwan (born June 21, 1948) is a British novelist, sometimes nicknamed Ian Macabre because of the nature of his early work. ... Categories: Movie stubs | 2004 films | Drama films ... Rhys Ifans (born 22 July 1968) is a Welsh actor. ... Jake Arnott is a British novelist who was born in Buckinghamshire in 1961 and now lives in North London. ...

Also in 2000, he adapted his Royal Court and Off-Broadway play 'Some Voices' for film, which premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight, directed by Simon Cellan-Jones and starring Daniel Craig and Kelly MacDonald. Simon Cellan-Jones is a British television director, who began his career as a production assistant in the mid-1980s, working on series such as Edge of Darkness. ... Daniel Craig Daniel Wroughton Craig (born March 2, 1968) is an English actor. ... Kelly Macdonald (born February 23, 1976) is a Scottish actress, born in Glasgow, Scotland. ...

Other plays by Joe Penhall include Dumb Show, Love and Understanding, Pale Horse, and The Bullet.

His directorial debut was the short film 'The Undertaker' which premiered at the London Film Festival, starring Rhys Ifans. Rhys Ifans (born 22 July 1968) is a Welsh actor. ...