Seamus McGarvey

Biography

Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC (born 29 June 1967) is a cinematographer from Armagh, Northern Ireland. He lives in Tuscany, Italy.

He has received two Academy Award nominations for his cinematography, in Joe Wright's 2007 drama Atonement and his 2012 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.

In addition to the Oscar nominations, McGarvey won the British Society of Cinematographers (B.S.C.) award for Anna Karenina and for Nocturnal Animals, as well as a nomination for Atonement, and earned BAFTA noms for Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Nocturnal Animals.

 He received A.S.C. nods for Atonement and Anna Karenina. Atonement earned him nominations for the British Independent Film Award, the Chicago Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society, and he received the top honor from the Phoenix Film Critics Society.

McGarvey has won three Evening Standard British Film Awards for Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Stephen Daldry's The Hours and six Irish Film & Television Awards for Atonement, Anna Karenina, Sahara and We Need to Talk About Kevin, Nocturnal Animals, and The Greatest Showman.

 In 2004, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's prestigious Lumiere Medal, with Jack Cardiff, Freddie Francis, Roger Deakins, and Ridley Scott, for contributions to the art of cinematography.

McGarvey was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland. He began his career as a still photographer, before attending film school at the University of Westminster in London.

Upon graduating in 1988, he began shooting short films and documentaries, including Skin, which was nominated for a Royal Television Society Cinematography Award, and Atlantic, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood. 

The latter project, an experimental, three-screen projected film created in 1997, earned Taylor-Wood a nomination for the 1998 Turner Prize and led to an ongoing collaboration between McGarvey and the director.

His four dozen credits as director of photography include Joss Whedon's superhero film The Avengers; Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin; Oliver Stone's World Trade Center; Gary Winick's Charlotte's Web; John Hamburg's Along Came Polly; Stephen Frears' High Fidelity; Mike Nichols' Wit; Michael Apted's Enigma; Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss; and two projects marking actors' directorial debuts: Tim Roth's The War Zone and Alan Rickman's The Winter Guest. He served as cinematographer on the pilot for the TV series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, directed by Anthony Minghella.