Alastair Fothergill (born 10 April 1960 in London the United Kingdom) is a producer of nature documentaries for television and cinema. He is the executive producer of the multi-award winning series The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006) and the co-director of the associated feature films Deep Blue and Earth. Fothergill attended Harrow. He studied zoology at St Cuthbert's Society in the University of Durham and made his first film, On the Okavango, while still a student. Fothergill joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1983, working on The Really Wild Show, Wildlife on One and David Attenborough's The Trials of Life. He was appointed head of the Unit in 1992, and during his tenure he produced Attenborough's award-winning series Life in the Freezer. In June 1998, he stood down as head of the Unit to concentrate on his work on The Blue Planet. He has also presented several television programmes, including The Abyss and is the author of three books. He was awarded the "Clean Energy Award" by BMW during the Cinema for Peace award ceremony on 11 February 2008. In 2008, he signed a multi-picture deal with newly formed Disneynature, and now spends six months each year on sabbatical from the BBC developing feature documentaries as an independent producer. The first two titles under the Disneynature deal will be Big Cats and Chimpanzee, which he is co-directing with Keith Scholey and Mark Linfield respectively. He is also producing a new seven-part natural history series for the BBC called Frozen Planet, due for completion in 2011. The series will feature the struggles of charismatic animals during a time of rapid climate change in the polar regions. David Attenborough will again narrate. Fothergill currently lives in Bristol with his wife Melinda and his two sons, Hamish and William.
A witty and tenacious team of filmmakers brave the Antarctic...