Christopher Nolan
Sir Christopher Edward Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. A significant auteur of his generation, he has been a major Hollywood figure in the 21st century. Nolan's films have earned over $6 billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing film director. His accolades include two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and two British Academy Film Awards. Nolan was appointed as a CBE in 2019 and was knighted in 2024 for his contributions to film.
Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following. Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento, and transitioned into studio filmmaking with Insomnia. He became a high-profile director with The Dark Knight trilogy and found further success with The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk. After the release of Tenet, Nolan parted ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures and signed with Universal Pictures for Oppenheimer, which won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.
Nolan's work regularly features in the listings of best films of their respective decades. Infused with a metaphysical outlook, his films thematise epistemology, existentialism, ethics, the construction of time and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. They feature mathematically inspired images and concepts, unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format film photography and materialistic perspectives. His enthusiasm for the use and preservation of traditional film stock in cinema production as opposed to digital cameras has also garnered significant attention. He has co-written several of his films with his brother, Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife, Emma Thomas.
Early life and education
Christopher Edward Nolan was born on 30 July 1970 in Westminster, London. His father, Brendan James Nolan, was a British advertising executive of Irish descent who worked as a creative director. His mother, Christina Jensen, is a former American flight attendant from Evanston, Illinois; she also worked as a teacher of English. He has an elder brother, Matthew, and a younger brother, Jonathan, also a filmmaker. The three brothers were raised Catholic in Highgate and spent their summers in Evanston. Nolan also spent time living in Chicago during his youth, and he holds both UK and US citizenship.File:Flaxman Gallery, UCL.JPG|thumb|alt=An image showing the top of the oculus in the Flaxman Gallery, University College London|Nolan attended University College London and used its Flaxman Gallery for a scene in Inception.
Growing up, Nolan was particularly influenced by the work of Sir Ridley Scott and the science fiction films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. He would repeatedly watch the latter film and extensively research its making. Nolan began making films at the age of seven, borrowing his father's Super8 camera and shooting short films with his action figures. These films included a stop motion animation homage to Star Wars called Space Wars. He cast his brother Jonathan and built sets from "clay, flour, egg boxes and toilet rolls". His uncle, who had worked at NASA building guidance systems for the Apollo rockets, sent him some launch footage: "I re-filmed them off the screen and cut them in, thinking no-one would notice", Nolan later remarked. From the age of 11, he aspired to be a professional filmmaker. Between 1981 and 1983, Nolan enrolled at Barrow Hills, a Catholic prep school in Witley, Surrey. In his teenage years, Nolan started making films with Adrien and Roko Belic. Nolan and Roko co-directed the surreal 8mm Tarantella, which was shown on Image Union, an independent film and video showcase on the Public Broadcasting Service. In 2021, after a fan posted a copy of Tarantella online, Nolan's production company filed a copyright infringement claim to have the film removed.
Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an independent school in Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire, and later studied English literature at University College London. Opting out of a traditional film education, he pursued "a degree in something unrelated", which his father suggested "gives a different take on things". He chose UCL specifically for its filmmaking facilities, which comprised a Steenbeck editing suite and 16mm film cameras. Nolan was president of the Union's Film Society, and with Emma Thomas he screened feature films in 35mm during the school year and used the money earned to produce 16mm films over the summers. He graduated in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in English literature; Thomas, who studied history at UCL and was also active in the Film Society, met Nolan on his first day at Ramsay Halls. They later married and co-founded the production company Syncopy. Both have retained strong ties with UCL, receiving honorary fellowships, and in 2017 Nolan was awarded an honorary doctorate.
Career
1993–2003: Early career and breakthrough
After earning his bachelor's degree in English literature in 1993, Nolan worked as a script reader, camera operator and director of corporate films and industrial films. He directed, wrote and edited the short film Larceny, which was filmed over a weekend in black and white with limited equipment and a small cast and crew. Funded by Nolan and shot with the UCL Union Film society's equipment, it appeared at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996 and is considered one of UCL's best shorts. For unknown reasons, the film has since been removed from public view. Nolan filmed a third short, Doodlebug, about a man seemingly chasing an insect with his shoe, only to discover that it is a miniature of himself.Nolan and Thomas first attempted to make a feature in the mid-1990s titled Larry Mahoney, which they scrapped. During this period in his career, Nolan had little to no success getting his projects off the ground, facing several rejections; he added, "here's a very limited pool of finance in the UK. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind of place ... Never had any support whatsoever from the British film industry."
Shortly after abandoning Larry Mahoney, Nolan conceived the idea for his first feature, Following, which he wrote, directed, photographed and edited. The film depicts an unemployed young writer who trails strangers through London, hoping they will provide material for his first novel, but is drawn into a criminal underworld when he fails to keep his distance. It was inspired by Nolan's experience of living in London and having his apartment burgled; he observed that the common attribute between larceny and pursuing someone through a crowd was that they both cross social boundaries. Co-produced by Nolan with Thomas and Theobald, it was made on a budget of around £3,000. Most of the cast and crew were friends of Nolan, and shooting took place on weekends over the course of a year. To conserve film stock, each scene was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit. Following won several awards during its festival run and was well-received by critics who labelled Nolan a majorly talented debutant. Scott Timberg of New Times LA wrote that it "echoed Hitchcock classics", but was "leaner and meaner". Janet Maslin of The New York Times was impressed with its "spare look" and "agile hand-held camerawork", saying, "As a result, the actors convincingly carry off the before, during and after modes that the film eventually, and artfully, weaves together."
Following success afforded Nolan the opportunity to make Memento, which became his breakthrough film. His brother Jonathan pitched the idea to him, about a man with anterograde amnesia who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for his wife's murderer. Jonathan worked the idea into a short story, "Memento Mori", and Nolan developed it into a screenplay that told the story in reverse. Aaron Ryder, an executive for Newmarket Films, said it was "perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen". The film was optioned and given a budget of $4.5million, with Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss in the starring roles. Newmarket also distributed the film after it was rejected by studios who feared that it would not attract a wide audience. Following a positive word of mouth and screenings in 500 theatres, it earned $40million. Memento premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2000 to critical acclaim. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote in his review, "I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time." In the book The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, Basil Smith drew a comparison with John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which argues that conscious memories constitute our identities – a theme Nolan explores in the film. Memento earned Nolan many accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, as well as two Independent Spirit Awards: Best Director and Best Screenplay. Six critics listed it as one of the best films of the 2000s. In 2001, Nolan and Emma Thomas founded the production company Syncopy Inc.
Impressed by his work on Memento, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh recommended Nolan to Warner Bros. to direct the psychological thriller Insomnia, although the studio initially wanted a more seasoned director. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name, the film is viewed as "the outlier of Nolan's filmography" due to its perceived lack of unconventionality he is known for. Starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, Insomnia follows two Los Angeles detectives sent to a northern Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a local teenager. It received positive reviews from critics and earned $113million against a budget of $46million. Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film for introducing new perspectives and ideas on the issues of morality and guilt, adding, "Unlike most remakes, the Nolan Insomnia is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play." Richard Schickel of Time deemed Insomnia a "worthy successor" to Memento and "a triumph of atmosphere over a none-too-mysterious mystery".
Following, Memento and Insomnia established Nolan's image as an "auteur". After the lattermost, he wrote a screenplay for a Howard Hughes biopic. Nolan reluctantly tabled his script after learning that Martin Scorsese was already making one such film: The Aviator. He was then briefly attached to direct a film adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel The Keys to the Street for Fox Searchlight Pictures but chose to direct Batman Begins instead. In April 2003, filmmaker David O. Russell put Nolan in a headlock at a Hollywood party after learning that Jude Law, whom Russell wanted to cast, had decided to work with Nolan instead. Russell pressured Nolan to display "artistic solidarity" by relinquishing Law from his cast.