Who directed the 1998 romantic comedy "Shakespeare in Love"?

John Madden directed the 1998 romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love.

The film presents a fictional romance between the young William Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes, and Viola de Lesseps, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Their relationship is woven into the imagined creation of Romeo and Juliet, blending Elizabethan theater history with a modern romantic-comedy structure.

Madden was an English director of stage, film, television, and radio. Shakespeare in Love became his best-known film and earned major critical and commercial success. It received 13 Academy Award nominations and won 7, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Paltrow, and Best Original Screenplay for Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

A common mix-up is confusing John Madden with the American football coach and broadcaster of the same name. The director is an English filmmaker, born in Portsmouth in 1949. Other names in the choices are also associated with period or romantic films, but none directed Shakespeare in Love.