The Lady in the Van
A reclusive playwright must confront his own loneliness and moral obligations when a mysterious woman makes her battered van home in his driveway, turning his quiet life into a delicate battle of compassion versus personal boundaries.
“A mostly true story”
Synopsis
The true story follows the relationship between Alan Bennett and the unique Miss Shepherd, a woman of unknown origins who "temporarily" parked her van in Bennett's London driveway and ended up living there for 15 years.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 20
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Tariq AnwarShot by Andrew DunnScored by George FentonDesigned by John Beard
Box Office
2015 · Box office
💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.9× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$41.4M
US & Canada: $10.0M — 24% of worldwide · International: $31.4M (76%)
Opening weekend: $48K — 0% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $48K — 0% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 2 theaters
Also known as
- Die Lady im Lieferwagende
- La dame à la camionnettefr
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Cast & Crew
20 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Maggie Smith
as Miss Shepherd
Alex Jennings
as Alan Bennett
Maggie Smith Nm0001749
as Miss Shepherd
Jim Broadbent
as Underwood
Clare Hammond
as Young Margaret Fairchild
George Fenton
as Conductor
Bbc Concert Orchestra
as The British Symphony Orchestra
Jamie Parker
as Estate Agent
Deborah Findlay
as Pauline
Roger Allam
as Rufus
Richard Griffiths
as Sam Perry
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
3Other crew
5Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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