Biography for
Christopher Nolan (I)

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Date of Birth

30 July 1970, London, England, UK

Birth Name

Christopher Johnathan James Nolan

Nickname

Chris

Height

5' 11" (1.80 m)

Mini Biography

Born in London in 1970, Christopher Nolan began making films at the age of seven using his father's super 8mm camera and an assortment of male-action figures. He graduated to making films involving real people, and his super 8mm surreal short 'tarantella' was shown on PBS' 'image union' in 1989. Chris studied English Literature at University College London while starting to make 16mm films at the college film society. His short film 'larceny' was shown at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996, and his other 16mm shorts include a three- minute surreal film called 'doodlebug'.

IMDb Mini Biography By: rjpurves@aol.com

Spouse

Emma Thomas

(1997 - present)

Trade Mark

Begins his movies and introduces his main characters with a close up of their hands performing an action.

Often works with editor Dody Dorn, composer David Julyan and cinematographer Wally Pfister.

Often casts British or non-American actors in American roles.

Has worked with actor Larry Holden in each film since Memento (2000).

Frequently casts Christian Bale.

Frequently casts Michael Caine.

Usually starts films with a flashback or a scene from the end of the movie.

Trivia

Gained major funding during the 1999 Hong Kong Film Festival by showing his film Following (1998) and then asking the audience to donate money to his next film Memento (2000).

Brother of Jonathan Nolan

Nephew of John Nolan

Is red and green colorblind.

Has signed with Warner Bros. to develop the next chapter in the Batman series.

Studied English Literature in college.

He is a big James Bond fan, and said to David S. Goyer, that his favorite James Bond movie, is "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"

His top ten favorite movies are: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Black Hole (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Chinatown (1974), The Hitcher (1986), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Star Wars (1977), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Topkapi (1964), as well as anything by Stanley Kubrick.

Doesn't like CGI in movies and purposely avoided it when he made "Batman Begins"

Following Insomnia, his next project was going to be a Howard Hughes biopic starring Jim Carrey. Nolan had the screenplay written (calling it "one of the best things I've ever written"), but once it became apparent Martin Scorsese was making his own Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004), Nolan reluctantly tabled his script and took up directing Batman Begins (2005).

Spent his childhood moving back and forth between United Kingdom and the United States. His accent is mostly English, but occasionally varies into an American accent. Nolan is comfortable with and knowledgeable of both cultures.

Has both US and UK citizenship.

Made three movies back-to-back starring Christian Bale: Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006) and The Dark Knight (2008).

He is a big fan of the band Radiohead.

Resides in Los Angeles with his wife Emma Thomas and their three children.

Personal Quotes

"The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it." - commenting on working with actors who have distinctively different styles.

"...I studied English Literature. I wasn't a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well."

"As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place."

"A lot of it is being done in commercials and music videos. I've never done them, but I think that those are forms in which cross-cutting and parallel action are absolutely standard and accepted as a mainstream language. Film-makers like myself enjoy the fruits of that experimentation and absorption by the mainstream. I think people's capacity to absorb a fractured mise-en-scene is extraordinary now compared to forty years ago."

"Yes, to me that's one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It's definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that's something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have."

"The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started. What I'm trying to do is to create modern equivalents that speak to me of those tropes that have more of the original power."

"I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. Alien, Blade Runner just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons."

[On using CGI in Batman Begins] "I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal, I know I've felt it. The demand we put on ourselves was to be as spectacular as possible, but not depend on computer graphics to do it."

[On casting Batman] "Batman is a marvelously complex character-somebody who has absolute charm and then, just like that, can turn it into ice-cold ruthlessness. There are very few actors who can do that, and Christian is one of them."

"I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it."

"Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide."

"But there's a very limited pool of finance in the UK. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind of place. In Hollywood there's a great openness, almost a voracious appetite for new people. In England there's a great suspicion of the new. In cultural terms, that can be a good thing, but when you're trying to break into the film industry, it's definitely a bad thing. I never had any luck with interesting people in small projects when I was doing Following. Never had any support whatsoever from the British film industry, other than Working Title, the company that [producer] Emma Thomas was working for at the time. They let me use their photocopier, stuff like that, which is not to be underestimated."

"I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am."

"We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale."

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