British Comic Actor Rowan Atkinson Abandoned His Engineering Degree To Focus On Acting

Rowan Atkinson was brought up Anglican, and was educated at Durham Choristers School, a preparatory school, and then at St Bees School. Rodney, Rowan and their older brother Rupert were brought up in Consett and went to school with the future Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at Durham Choristers.

After receiving top grades in science A levels, he secured a place at Newcastle University, where he received a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. In 1975, he continued for the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen’s College, Oxford, the same college where his father matriculated in 1935, and which made Atkinson an Honorary Fellow in 2006. His MSc thesis, published in 1978, considered the application of self-tuning control.

Atkinson briefly embarked in doctoral work before devoting his full attention to acting. First winning national attention in The Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1976, he had already written and performed sketches for shows in Oxford by the Etceteras – and for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), meeting writer Richard Curtis, and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.