Christopher Nolan is a British-American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His feature directorial debut was the neo-noir crime thriller Following (1998) which was made on a shoestring budget of $6,000. [1] [note 1] Two years later, he directed the psychological thriller Memento (2000) which starred Guy Pearce as a man suffering from anterograde amnesia (short-term memory loss) searching for his wife's killers. [3] Similar to his debut feature it had a non-linear narrative structure, and was his breakthrough film. [4] It was acclaimed by critics and was a surprise commercial success. [5] For the film Nolan received his first nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, and for writing its screenplay he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. [6] [7] He next directed the mystery thriller remake Insomnia (2002) which starred Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank. [8] It was his first film for Warner Bros., and was a critical and commercial success. [9] [10]
In 2005, Nolan directed Warner Bros' superhero film Batman Begins which starred Christian Bale and told an origin story of the title character. [11] The following year, he directed psychological thriller The Prestige (2006) in which Bale and Hugh Jackman played rival 19th-century stage magicians. [12] His next film was the sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight , in which Bale reprised his role as Batman opposite Heath Ledger as the Joker. The film grossed a worldwide total of over $1 billion, and was the highest grossing of 2008. [13] It received eight nominations at the 81st Academy Awards, and Nolan received his second nomination at the Directors Guild of America Awards. [14] [15] In 2010, he directed the action film Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a thief who leads a team who steal information by entering a person's subconscious. [16] It was nominated for Best Film at the Academy Awards, British Academy Film Awards, and Golden Globe Awards, and Nolan received his third nomination at the Directors Guild of America Awards. [17]
Two years later, he directed The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which grossed a worldwide total at the box office of over $1 billion. [18] He followed this by producing Zack Snyder's superhero film Man of Steel (2013) and directing the science fiction film Interstellar (2014), which starred Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain. It won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. [19] In 2017, Nolan directed the war film Dunkirk , for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. [20] Three years later he directed the science fiction film Tenet (2020). [21] His next feature was Oppenheimer (2023), a biopic centered on J. Robert Oppenheimer, with Cillian Murphy starring as the titular character. [22]
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Ref(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1998 | Following [lower-alpha 1] | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] |
2000 | Memento | Yes | Yes | No | [23] [24] |
2002 | Insomnia | Yes | No | No | [23] [24] |
2005 | Batman Begins | Yes | Yes | No | [23] [24] |
2006 | The Prestige | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2008 | The Dark Knight | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2010 | Inception | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2012 | The Dark Knight Rises | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2013 | Man of Steel | No | Story | Yes | [23] |
2014 | Interstellar | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2017 | Dunkirk | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] [24] |
2020 | Tenet | Yes | Yes | Yes | [9] [25] |
2023 | Oppenheimer | Yes | Yes | Yes | [26] |
Executive producer
Year | Title | Notes | Ref(s) |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Transcendence | [23] [24] | |
2016 | Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | [23] [24] | |
2017 | Justice League | [23] [24] | |
2019 | The Doll's Breath | Animated short film | [27] |
2021 | Zack Snyder's Justice League | Director's cut of 2017's Justice League | [28] |
Year | Title | Director | Producer | Writer | Cinematographer | Editor | Notes | Ref(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1989 | Tarantella | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No official release, available on Media Burn Independent Video Archive Co-directed with Roko Belic | [23] [29] |
1996 | Larceny | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No official release | [23] [24] |
1997 | Doodlebug | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | [23] | |
2015 | Quay | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Also composer Documentary short | [23] |
Year | Title | Ref(s) |
---|---|---|
2011 | These Amazing Shadows | [24] |
2012 | Side by Side | [23] [24] |
2016 | Cinema Futures | [30] |
2018 | James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction | [31] |
2019 | Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound | [32] |
2023 | 100 Years of Warner Bros |
Sir Christopher Edward Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, he is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. Nolan's films have earned over $6 billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing film director of all time. His accolades include two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two British Academy Film Awards. Nolan was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2019, and received a knighthood in 2024 for his contributions to film.
Cillian Murphy is an Irish actor. He made his professional debut in Enda Walsh's 1996 play Disco Pigs, a role he later reprised in the 2001 screen adaptation. His early film credits include the horror film 28 Days Later (2002), the dark comedy Intermission (2003), the thriller Red Eye (2005), the Irish war drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), and the science fiction thriller Sunshine (2007). He played a transgender Irish woman in the comedy-drama Breakfast on Pluto (2005), which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination.
Emily Olivia Laura Blunt is a British actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and four British Academy Film Awards. Forbes ranked her as one of the highest-paid actresses in the world in 2020.
Jonathan Nolan is a British and American screenwriter and producer. He is the creator of the CBS science fiction series Person of Interest (2011–2016) and co-creator of the HBO science fiction/Western series Westworld (2016–2022).
Dame Emma Thomas, Lady Nolan,, is a British film producer. She has produced all of the feature films directed by her husband Sir Christopher Nolan, which have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide and are regarded as some of the greatest films of their respective decades.
Syncopy Inc. is a British-American film production company founded and operated by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan. The name of the company is a play on syncopation and was suggested to Nolan by his late father, who was a classical music fan. It has offices in London and Los Angeles.
Charles "Chuck" Roven is an American film producer and the president and co-founder of Atlas Entertainment.
Robert Downey Jr. is an American actor who has starred in numerous films, and television series. Downey made his acting debut in 1970's Pound, directed by his father Robert Downey Sr., at the age of five. In the 1980s, Downey was considered a member of the Brat Pack after appearing in the films Weird Science with Anthony Michael Hall (1985), Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield (1986), Less than Zero with Andrew McCarthy (1987), and Johnny Be Good again with Hall (1988). Downey also starred in the films True Believer (1989) and Chances Are (1989), and was a regular cast member on the late-night variety show Saturday Night Live in 1985.
The Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director is one of the annual Directors Guild of America Awards given by Directors Guild of America. It was first awarded at the 68th Directors Guild of America Awards.
Jennifer Lame is an American film editor. She is known for her work on Manchester by the Sea, Hereditary, Tenet, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and the films of Noah Baumbach. In 2023, Lame edited Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. She a native to Narberth, Pennsylvania and is married to film producer Craig Shilowich.
Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic biographical thriller film written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan. It follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles Oppenheimer's studies, his direction of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and his fall from grace after his 1954 security hearing. Cillian Murphy stars as Oppenheimer, alongside Robert Downey Jr. as the United States Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss. The ensemble supporting cast includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.