Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre and the elder brother of Julian Lloyd Webber.
He was the most popular theatre composer of the late 20th century and is arguably the most popular theatre composer of all time, with multiple showpieces that have run for more than a decade both on Broadway and in the West End. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also accumulated a number of honours, including a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992 then followed by a peerage, three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Oscar, an International Emmy, six Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. Several of his songs, notably "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Evita, "Memory" from Cats, and "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals. His company the Really Useful Group is one of the largest theatre operators in London.
Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948 in South Kensington in London, England. He is the son of composer William Lloyd Webber and piano teacher Jean Johnstone Lloyd Webber. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber is a world-famous cellist. Andrew began writing his own music at a young age. He wrote his first published suite of six pieces at the age of nine. He also put on "productions" with Julian and his Aunt Viola in his toy theatre (which he built at the suggestion of Viola). Little did he know that later in his life, he would be the owner of the Palace Theatre as well as multiple other London theatres. It was his Aunt Viola who encouraged him to pursue theatre. An actress herself, Viola took Andrew to see many of his first shows and took him through the stage-door and into the world of the theatre.
Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar of Westminster School and studied history for a time at Magdalen College, Oxford, although he did not complete the course, deciding instead to pursue his interest in musical theatre.
His first wife was Sarah Hugill, they married on July 24, 1972 and had two children, Imogen (born March 31, 1977) and Nicholas (born July 2, 1979). Lloyd Webber and Hugill were divorced in 1983, and he then married singer/dancer Sarah Brightman on March 22, 1984. He cast Brightman as Christine, the lead role in his musical, The Phantom of the Opera. However, they divorced in 1990 but remained friends.
He married his present wife, Madeleine Gurdon, on February 9, 1991, and had three more children: Alastair (born May 3, 1992), William (born August 24, 1993), and Isabella (born April 30, 1996).
He was knighted in 1992 and created a life peer in 1997 as Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Sydmonton in the County of Hampshire (his peerage title is hyphenated but his surname is not). He is ranked the 87th richest Briton in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 with an estimated wealth of £700m. He also owns much of Watership Down, the down made famous by Richard Adams's novel of the same name. Politically, he had been an active supporter and promoter of the Conservative Party, even writing music especially for a party political broadcast [citation needed].
Lord Lloyd-Webber is an art collector with a passion for Victorian art. An exhibition of works from his collection was presented at the Royal Academy in 2003 under the title Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters—The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection.