He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and is the son of distinguished
architect Professor Douglass Wise. It was assumed that he would be
an architect, so he studied architecture in Edinburgh. He dropped out,
though, after a while, and went to Glasgow to study drama.
He did his first professional job on stage, starring in "Good Rockin'
Tonight", a musical based on the life of TV producer
Jack Good. The first films he made
were
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
and
Feast of July (1995).