Mr Bean, it is his love of fast cars that is currently attracting the headlines.
The 56 year-old is a known car enthusiast and races cars as a hobby. He owns an impressive auto collection that includes an Aston Martin and a McLaren F1, which he crashed on the A605 in Haddon, Cambridgeshire on Thursday night.
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born in Consett, County Durham on January 6, 1955 and grew up on a farm in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
He attended Chorister School in Durham, at the same time as Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and St Bees School, Cumbria, before going on to study electrical engineering at Newcastle University.
He later moved to the Oxford University where he studied a MSc in electrical engineering.
It was at Oxford where he met Richard Curtis, with the pair becoming close friends and co-writers and performers for comedy revues.
At the age of 21, he was spotted by John Lloyd, a television producer and comedy writer, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
In 1979 Lloyd, 60, produced Atkinson’s first starring roles as one of the four members of the Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch team.
In 1981 he became the youngest person to have a one-man show in the West End of London, which earned him an Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Comedy Performance.
Two years later Atkinson starred in The Blackadder, which he co-wrote with Curtis, and together with its sequels, propelled him to the league of star status.
But it was his role as Mr Bean which led to critical acclaim and international stardom. The clumsy character was a walking disaster and critics praised the show as pure “physical comedy”.
It was in stark contrast to the polished dialogue of his previous character Edmund Blackadder. Atkinson made his big-screen debut in the 1983 unofficial James Bond picture Never Say Never Again.
He has also starred in other box office hits including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love, Actually, the Lion King, Scooby Doo and Jonny English. The Mr Bean television series have also spawned feature films.
As a long-time collaborator with Curtis, he regularly contributes to Comic Relief and also played the 9th Doctor, in the 1999 Doctor Who spoof The Curse Of Fatal Death.
The Blackadder and Mr Bean star managed to escape with only a broken shoulder after his two-million-pounds car lost control and hit a tree and a road sign before catching fire.
“I understand he has a fractured shoulder blade which is very painful and why he needed to stay in overnight. He is shaken but not stirred. I think he was in pain and had painkillers,” the Mirror quoted Peter Bennett-Jones, Atkinson’s agent as saying.
“He will be very rattled and I think he’ll want to keep as low profile as possible,” he added.
The 56-year-old has been discharged from the hospital and according to his agent, the accident took place as the actor drove back home after working on his new film Johnny English Reborn.
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