Nick Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, and grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons. He studied Commnication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.
In 1985 he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer") and completed A Grand Day Out. With A Grand Day Out in post-production, he made Creature Comforts as his contribution to a series of shorts called "Lip Synch". Creature Comforts matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes. The two films were nominated for a host of awards; A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.
Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1992) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, and both won Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He is working on a Wallace and Gromit feature for release in 2004, and is supervising a new series of "Creature Comforts" films for British television.