John Richardson (special effects designer)

John Richardson (born June 10, 1946 in England) is a British special effects supervisor. He is best known for his work on the James Bond film series (Casino Royale, Moonraker, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day), all the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Aliens (1986). For the latter, he won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 1987 ceremony.^[1] He won the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for his work on the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award at the 2012 ceremony.^[2][3]

Richardson is the son of special effects pioneer Cliff Richardson, who worked on films including The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Casino Royale (1967), the latter alongside his son. On 13 August 1976, while working on A Bridge Too Far (1977), Richardson was involved in a car accident in the Netherlands that resulted in the death of his girlfriend, Liz Moore, a sculptor and special effects creator who worked on the original suit for C-3PO.

In 2019, he published the book Making Movie Magic, which detailed his career in film. In addition to his work in special effects, he also specialized in pyrotechnics and as a second unit director.