Bonnie Curtis

Last updated

Bonnie Curtis
Born
Bonnie Kathleen Curtis

March 26, 1966 [1]
OccupationFilm producer
Awards PGA Award, Motion Picture Producer of the Year (1999)

Bonnie Kathleen Curtis (born March 26, 1966) [1] is an American film producer whose credits include Saving Private Ryan , A.I. , Minority Report , and The Lost World: Jurassic Park , directed by Steven Spielberg. Her first solo project was the 2005 release The Chumscrubber . She then joined Mockingbird Pictures with partner Julie Lynn in 2011. [3] Curtis and Lynn produced Albert Nobbs , which was nominated for three Academy Awards. Curtis is a co-recipient of the 1999 Producers Guild Award for Motion Picture Producer of the Year, for Saving Private Ryan. [4] On March 12, 2015, Curtis was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. [5] Spielberg congratulated her via video message during the ceremony. [6]

Contents

Life and career

Curtis was born in Dallas, Texas. [2] [7] She is a 1988 graduate of Abilene Christian University, where she majored in journalism after graduating from Dallas Christian High School; [2] she is a member of the university's Sigma Theta Chi women's social club. [8] She received the school's Gutenberg Award "for distinguished professional achievement" in journalism. [9]

Her earliest production work was on the films Arachnophobia and Dead Poets Society . [7] In 1989 Curtis started working with Spielberg, starting as a production assistant in what has turned out to be a 17-year professional relationship.

In her career, she has worked with a variety of actors, including Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey, Jude Law, Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Tom Cruise, and Colin Farrell.

Her project The Chumscrubber was the subject of an interview granted to The Advocate , in which she discussed the connections she saw between her parents' response to her "coming out" as a lesbian and the disbelieving response of the parents in the film to their children's stories of events and actions in their own lives that seem at odds with their parents' perceptions of them. [10] The interview also discussed her fundraising work with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network and her appreciation of Spielberg's support, both personally and politically, in the form of such actions as resigning from the national advisory board of the Boy Scouts of America to decry the group's positions on homosexuality.

In 2011, Curtis joined Julie Lynn's Mockingbird Pictures and the two became partners. They have since produced Albert Nobbs , The Face of Love , 5 to 7 , and Last Days in the Desert .

In addition to film producing, Curtis is also a well known event speaker. She has spoken at various company retreats, as well as Chicago Ideas Week 2014. [11]

Filmography

She was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

Film

YearFilmCredit
1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park Associate producer
Amistad Associate producer
1998 Saving Private Ryan Co-producer
2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2002 Minority Report
2005 The Chumscrubber
Red Eye Executive producer
2011 Albert Nobbs
2013 The Face of Love
2014 5 to 7
2015 Last Days in the Desert
2016 The Sweet Life
Wakefield
2017 Walking Out Executive producer
To the Bone
Life
2019 Terminator: Dark Fate Executive producer
2022 Raymond & Ray
My Father's Dragon
2023 Heart of Stone
Miscellaneous crew
YearFilmRole
1991 Hook Assistant: Steven Spielberg
1993 Jurassic Park
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story
Schindler's List Production associate
1995 Casper Assistant: Steven Spielberg
As an actress
YearFilmRole
2019Text Messages from the UniverseDancer
Thanks
YearFilmRole
2000MothmanThe producers wish to thank
2021 The Voyeurs Special thanks

Television

YearTitleCreditNotes
2018 Dietland Executive producer
2020Covid Is No JokeExecutive producerTelevision special
Thanks
YearTitleRole
2011FutureStatesThanks

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandy Dennis</span> American actress (1937–1992)

Sandra Dale Dennis was an American actress. She made her film debut in the drama Splendor in the Grass (1961). For her performance in the comedy-drama film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamie Bell</span> English actor

Andrew James Matfin Bell is an English actor. He rose to prominence for his debut role in Billy Elliot (2000), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, becoming one of the youngest winners of the award. He is also known for his leading roles as Tintin in The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and as Ben Grimm / Thing in Fantastic Four (2015). Other notable performances include in the films King Kong (2005), Jumper (2008), Snowpiercer (2013), and Rocketman (2019). He earned a second BAFTA Award nomination for his leading performance in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017). In television, Bell starred as Abraham Woodhull in the AMC historical drama series Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–2017).

<i>The Sugarland Express</i> 1974 film by Steven Spielberg

The Sugarland Express is a 1974 American crime drama film directed by Steven Spielberg in his feature film directorial debut. The film follows a woman and her husband as they take a police officer hostage and flee across Texas while they try to get to their child before he is placed in foster care. The event partially took place, the story is partially set, and the film was partially shot in Sugar Land, Texas. Other scenes for the film were filmed in San Antonio, Live Oak, Floresville, Pleasanton, Converse and Del Rio, Texas.

<i>Saving Face</i> (2004 film) 2005 film by Alice Wu

Saving Face is a 2004 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Alice Wu, in her feature-length debut. The film focuses on Wilhelmina, a young Chinese American surgeon; her unwed, pregnant mother; and her dancer girlfriend. It was the first Hollywood movie that centered on Chinese Americans since The Joy Luck Club (1993).

The Producers Guild of America Awards were originally established in 1990 by the Producers Guild of America as the Golden Laurel Awards, created by PGA Treasurer Joel Freeman with the support of Guild President Leonard Stern, in order to honor the visionaries who produce and execute motion picture and television product. The ceremony has been hosted each year by celebrity host/presenters, including Nick Clooney, Michael Douglas, Robert Guillaume, James Earl Jones, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Garry Marshall, Walter Matthau, Ronald Reagan, Marlo Thomas, Grant Tinker, Ted Turner, and Karen S. Kramer among others.

Allison Lyon Segan is a film producer. Her feature films have garnered eight Academy Awards out of eleven nominations. Most recently, she produced Shark Tale, an animated feature for DreamWorks that features Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese. Her thriller Swimfan, starring Erika Christensen and Jesse Bradford, was released by Twentieth Century Fox in September 2002 and became her fifth #1 movie at the box office on its opening weekend. She also produced One Night at McCool's for USA Films, starring Liv Tyler, Matt Dillon, John Goodman and Michael Douglas.

Dallas Christian School is a private, preparatory Christian day school for boys and girls located in Mesquite, Texas. The school offers classes for students ranging from pre-kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Dallas Christian School is a member of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonnie Arnold</span> American film producer

Bonnie Arnold is an American film producer and executive who has worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation, Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation. Arnold was born in Atlanta, Georgia and rose to prominence in Hollywood during the initial wave of computer-animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Leeson</span> American journalist (1957–2022)

David Leeson was a staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2004, together with Cheryl Diaz Meyer, for coverage of the Iraq War. He also received the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, the National Headliner Award, and a regional Emmy Award in 2004 for his work as executive producer and photographer for the WFAA-TV documentary "War Stories."

Yvonne Welbon is an American independent film director, producer, and screenwriter based in Chicago. She is known for her films, Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999), Sisters in Cinema (2003), and Monique (1992).

Arie Posin is an Israeli-born American film director and screenwriter best known for his 2005 film The Chumscrubber.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abilene Christian University</span> University in Texas

Abilene Christian University (ACU) is a private Christian university in Abilene, Texas. It was founded in 1906 as Childers Classical Institute. ACU is one of the largest private universities in the Southwestern United States and has one of the 200 largest university endowments in the United States. Affiliated with Churches of Christ, the university is nationally recognized for excellence in service learning, undergraduate research, and undergraduate teaching.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Savannah Smith</span> American basketball player

Savannah Smith is an American All State basketball player from Dallas. She is the youngest of four children.

A. C. Greene was an American writer – important in Texas literary matters as a memoirist, fiction writer, historian, poet, and influential book critic in Dallas. As a newspaper journalist, he had been a book critic and editor of the Editorial Page for the Dallas Times Herald when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, which galvanized his role at the paper to help untangle and lift a demoralized city in search of its soul. Leaving full-time journalism in 1968, Greene went on to become a prolific author of books, notably on Texas lore and history. His notoriety led to stints on radio and TV as a talk-show host. By the 1980s, his commentaries were being published by major media across the country. He had become a sought-after source for Texas history, anecdotes, cultural perspective, facts, humor, books, and politics. When the 1984 Republican National Convention was held in Dallas, Greene granted sixty-three interviews about Texas topics to major media journalists. Greene's 1990 book, Taking Heart – which examines the experiences of the first patient in a new heart transplant center (himself) – made The New York Times Editors Choice list.

<i>5 to 7</i> 2014 American romantic film

5 to 7 is a 2014 American romantic film written and directed by Victor Levin and starring Anton Yelchin, Bérénice Marlohe, Olivia Thirlby, Lambert Wilson, Frank Langella, Glenn Close and Eric Stoltz. Yelchin plays Brian, a 24-year-old writer who has an affair with a 33-year-old married French woman, Arielle (Marlohe). Arielle and her middle-aged husband, Valéry (Wilson), have an agreement allowing them to have extramarital affairs as long as they are confined to the hours between 5 and 7 p.m.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Minutaglio</span> American journalist

Bill Minutaglio is a journalist, educator and author of nine books. He is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Literary Award and has served as a professor at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was given The Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award.

Vivian Anderson Castleberry was an American newspaper editor, journalist, and women's rights activist, who was elected to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1984.

Hettie Lee Ewing was a female missionary to Japan for the Churches of Christ. She helped establish permanent churches there in the first part of the twentieth century.

Frances Ann McBroom Thompson was an American mathematics educator and textbook author who became a professor at Texas Woman's University.

References

  1. 1 2 Ancestry.com. Texas Birth Index, 1903–1997 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas. Texas Birth Index, 1903–1997. Texas: Texas Department of State Health Services. Microfiche.
  2. 1 2 3 Jordan Mackay. "Bonnie Curtis" (cover story), Texas Monthly, Vol. 28, Issue 9, p. 166ff, September 2000.
  3. "About Mockingbird Pictures | Mockingbird Pictures". mockingbirdpictures.com.
  4. "Bonnie Curtis". IMDb.
  5. Barker, Andrew (March 12, 2015). "Austin Film Society Fetes Lone Star Heroes".
  6. Cipriani, Casey (March 13, 2015). "Watch: Steven Spielberg's Touching Tribute to Bonnie Curtis in Texas".
  7. 1 2 20th Anniversary Topaz Awards Gala Archived March 21, 2005, at the Wayback Machine , October 22, 2004.
  8. Abilene Christian University alumni directory.
  9. Abilene Christian University, Gutenberg Award Winners Archived November 3, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  10. Christopher Lisotta. "Spielberg's star pupil", The Advocate , Issue 945, August 30, 2005. Retrieved on November 13, 2007.
  11. "Bonnie Curtis: Work Like a Producer". Chicago Ideas.