David Lean David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, responsible for large-scale epics such as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and "A Passage to India" (1984). He also directed adaptations of Charles Dickens novels "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948), and the romantic drama "Brief Encounter" (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's "In Which We Serve", which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with "Summertime" in
A Passage to India (film) that scripts are not written, but rewritten. The director cast Australian actress Judy Davis, then 28, as the naive Miss Quested after a two-hour meeting. When Davis gave her interpretation of what happened in the caves — “She can’t cope with her own sexuality, she just freaks out” — Lean said that the part was hers. Davis had garnered international attention in Gillian Armstrong’s "My Brilliant Career" (1979) and had appeared in "A Woman Called Golda" (1982) as a young Golda Meir. Lean wanted Celia Johnson, star of "Brief Encounter", to play Mrs Moore, but she turned down the part