page_title: Ian Curtis
section_title: Film portrayals
hierarchical_section_title: Ian Curtis / Legacy / Film portrayals
caption_attribution_description: English: 77 Barton Street, Macclesfield, Cheshire. Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis lived and died here, a suicide on 18 May 1980. Curtis's house is to the right of the corner house.
context_page_description: Ian Kevin Curtis was an English singer-songwriter and musician. He was the lead singer and lyricist of the post-punk band Joy Division and recorded two albums with the group: Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Curtis was known for his bass-baritone voice, dance style, and songwriting typically filled with imagery of desolation, emptiness, and alienation.
  Musically, Curtis was influenced by a range of artists such as David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Sex Pistols, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Roxy Music, Lou Reed and Neu!, as well as lyrically by writers like William Burroughs, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, T. S. Eliot, J. G. Ballard, and Yehiel De-Nur. Curtis was particularly influenced by Iggy Pop's stage persona.
  Curtis, who suffered from epilepsy and depression, took his own life on the eve of Joy Division's first North American tour and shortly before the release of Closer. His death resulted in the band's dissolution and the subsequent formation of New Order.
  Despite their short career, Joy Division have exerted a wide-reaching influence.
context_section_description: Curtis was portrayed by Sean Harris in the 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, which dramatised the rise and fall of Factory Records from the 1970s to the 1990s. In 2007, a British biographical film entitled Control about Curtis was released. This film was largely based upon Deborah Curtis' book Touching from a Distance. The film was directed by the Dutch rock photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn, who had previously photographed the band and directed the video for their single "Atmosphere". Deborah Curtis and Tony Wilson were executive producers, while Todd Eckert of Clara Flora was the producer. Sam Riley, the lead singer of the band 10,000 Things, portrays Curtis, while Samantha Morton plays his wife, Deborah.
  Control was debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2007, and took three awards at the Directors' Fortnight. Control portrays Curtis' secondary school romance with Deborah, their marriage, his problems balancing his domestic life with his rise to fame, his struggles with both his major depressive issues and his poorly medicated epilepsy, and his later relationship with Annik Honoré.
caption: 77 Barton Street, Macclesfield (at right). Seen here in 2014.
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