BIO, MOVIES, and CAREER

Some film directors are renowned for their ability to imagine the unimaginable.

But if you’re Christopher Nolan, “unimaginable” only begins to scratch the surface. An unequivocally outside-the-box visionary, Nolan’s projects prove he doesn’t just dream big—he dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dreams big.

Mindboggling, multilayered dreamscapes are the backbone of 2010 Nolan vehicle and action-suspense hit Inception, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marian Cotillard, Elliot Page, and a slew of other household names. But before he was directing star-studded blockbusters, Christopher Nolan started small. His earliest forays into filmmaking occurred when he was just a seven-year-old boy, via the beloved Super 8 camera on which he shot sci-fi sequences of his action figures and other toys. At University College London, he honed his craft, churning out short film after short film despite focusing his energy on a degree in English literature.

Nolan turned heads with his 1998 film Following, which he wrote, directed, filmed and edited with close friends on a shoestring budget of less than $5,000. Its understated, black-and-white neo-noirish flair earned praise for being artistic, well-crafted, and, above all, cerebral—attributes that would characterize his subsequent project—Memento (2000)—but on a much, much more significant level.

Memento, starring Guy Pierce and Carrie Anne-Moss, was a total breakthrough success. Nolan’s brother Jonathan conceived its premise—that of an amnesiac trying to solve his wife’s murder—before Christopher adapted it for the screen, deftly telling the story in reverse. The movie earned $40 million after being shot on a $4.5 million budget. Beyond its box office success, Memento made Nolan a serious standout—he received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for the screenplay, and enjoyed recognition from Hollywood heavy-hitters like Rogert Ebert and Steven Soderbergh. Then, it was off to the races.

Over the last 20 years, Christopher Nolan the auteur has been a perennial moviemaking master. The Dark Knight (2008), considered by many to be not only the greatest Batman film ever made, but the best superhero movie in existence, is a once-in-a-generation milestone. Stir in The Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017), and you’ve got the kind of resume that all but guarantees silver screen immortality.

 

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