Tom Hooper

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Tom Hooper at the Toronto International Film Festival 2010

Thomas George "Tom" Hooper (born October 1, 1972 in London ) is a British film and television director . Hooper worked first on British television, where he mainly as a director of historical films noticed. In 2005 he directed the two-part television film Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren , for which he received an Emmy Award for best director of a television film. Elizabeth I and the 2008 published mini-series John Adams - Freedom for America received numerous awards.

In 2010, Hooper's third cinema production, the period film The King's Speech , was released. The film received critical acclaim and received multiple awards, including the Producers Guild of America Award and the Oscar for Colin Firth for best actor. As the director of The King's Speech , Hooper won, among other things, an Oscar and was nominated for the Golden Globe and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA Award).

biography

Tom Hooper was born in 1972 to an Australian author and an English media entrepreneur . Hooper grew up in London, where he attended Highgate School . He began to be interested in film production at the age of twelve, and shortly afterwards he made his first amateur films .

After completing his school education, Tom Hooper produced the short film Painted Faces , which was broadcast on the British television station Channel 4 in 1992 . Hooper began studying English in Oxford , but worked in parallel as a director for commercials and as a theater director at the Oxford Playhouse.

Through the mediation of television producer Matthew Robinson, Hooper began working for British television in 1997. After the short-lived soap opera Quayside , he directed the youth series Byker Grobe as well as several episodes of the soap opera EastEnders and the comedy series Cold Feet . 2001 Tom Hooper turned to a costume drama for the first time. For the BBC he shot the two-part film Love in a Cold Climate, based on Nancy Mitford's novels . In 2002 a three-part film adaptation of George Eliot 's novel of the same name followed with Daniel Deronda . Both television films have been nominated for several BAFTA television awards. In 2003, Hooper received a request from Granada Television to direct the sixth season of the crime series Hot Suspicion . Hooper was initially not taken with the idea of ​​directing the series, but leading actress Helen Mirren persuaded him to participate and guaranteed him every artistic freedom.

In 2004 Tom Hooper made his cinema debut with the drama Red Dust - Truth Leads to Freedom , a British-South African co-production. The following year, at Helen Mirren's request, Hooper directed the two-part television film Elizabeth I, about the last two decades of the Queen's reign. The co-production by Channel 4 and the American television broadcaster HBO won numerous television awards. Helen Mirren was recognized for both best leading actress in a film drama ( The Queen ) and best leading actress in a miniseries or television film at the 2007 Golden Globe Awards . At the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006 , Elizabeth I. received nine awards, in addition to the one for Mirren as an actress and for Tom Hooper as a director. Hooper's next work, the television film The Manchester Bog Murderer, about Lord Longford's efforts to obtain a pardon for serial killer Myra Hindley , was a co-production of Channel 4 and HBO. Jim Broadbent received an Emmy Award and the BAFTA Television Award for portraying Longford. Hooper himself was honored with the Nymph d'Or of the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo .

The successes of Elizabeth I and The Bog Murderess of Manchester led Tom Hanks to offer Hooper the direction of a multi-part television series about John Adams , the second President of the United States. The miniseries John Adams - Freedom for America , produced by Hanks and HBO, had a budget of $ 100 million, making it the most expensive television drama at the time of its completion . With Paul Giamatti in the title role, it proved to be a great success and set a new record for a miniseries with 13 awards at the 2008 Primetime Emmy Awards . Hooper himself went away empty-handed at the Emmy Awards.

Hooper's next project was again a British theme. After Stephen Frears' retirement , Hooper took on the direction of the sports drama The Damned United , which Brian Clough's brief stint in the summer of 1974 as a coach at Leeds United football club themed. He worked again on this film with screenwriter Peter Morgan , who had also written the screenplay for The Moor Murderess of Manchester . The Damned United became a hit with audiences in the UK and established Hooper as a film director.

Hooper with his Oscar for directing for The King's Speech and last year's winner Kathryn Bigelow

Hoopers third cinema work was an adaptation of the as yet unpublished play The King's Speech by David Seidler , which shows the relationship of the British King George VI. to his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. Hooper's mother brought this play to his attention and reminded the director of his own British-Australian family history. Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush were hired as leading actors for The King's Speech , and The Weinstein Company was an American distributor for the British production. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2010 and won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival that same month . The King's Speech became Tom Hooper's biggest box office success to date, and the film won numerous awards in the 2010/11 season. Colin Firth in particular has received several awards, including the Golden Globe Award and the British Independent Film Award . The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and Producers Guild of America honored The King's Speech as best feature film, Tom Hooper also won the Oscar , the Directors Guild of America Award and was awarded the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA , among others Award nominated for best director. The King's Speech was awarded a total of seven BAFTAs and four Oscars.

At the same time as the shooting of The King's Speech , Hooper initially prepared a remake of John Steinbeck's Jenseits von Eden , but the project was abandoned by the American studio Universal Pictures . Furthermore, Hooper is planning a film adaptation of Nelson Mandela's autobiography The Long Road to Freedom .

In early September 2011, Hooper's engagement as director of the theatrical version of the musical Les Misérables, starring Hugh Jackman , Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, was announced. The film version premiered on November 23, 2012 in New York . In this adaptation of the stage musical, Hooper dared to experiment with recording the singing of the actors live on the set (instead of, as usual, in the studio).

In 2015 he directed the biopic The Danish Girl . The film premiered on September 5, 2015 at the Venice International Film Festival , was released in US cinemas on November 27, 2015 and in German cinemas on January 7, 2016.

At Christmas 2019, Hooper's fantasy musical film Cats, based on the musical of the same name, was released in cinemas.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Tom Hooper  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Australian : The perfect vehicle for Geoffrey Rush , December 22, 2010.
  2. ^ A b The Sunday Times : Briton Tom Hooper in charge of the TV war of independence , March 16, 2008.
  3. ↑ a b c The Guardian : Prime candidate , October 16, 2006.
  4. ^ The Independent : Tackling Old Big 'Ead: The secret of making Brian Clough live again on screen , February 26, 2009.
  5. ↑ Academy of Television Arts & Sciences: The 2009–2010 Primetime Emmy® Awards Facts & Figures (PDF; 62 kB) , accessed January 24, 2011.
  6. ↑ The Observer : Trailer Trash: Not Match of the Day , November 11, 2007.
  7. ^ Vanity Fair : The King's Speech Director Tom Hooper on the King's Stammer, Colin Firth, and the Royal Family , December 8, 2010.
  8. ↑ Internet Movie Database : List of awards for The King's Speech , accessed January 25, 2011.
  9. ↑ Los Angeles Times : The Envelope: 'King's Speech' director Tom Hooper on Hollywood: No one says what they really mean , November 9, 2010.
  10. ^ The Guardian : 'Definitive' Nelson Mandela film takes money from arms company Ferrostaal , November 2, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Hooper, Tom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hooper, Thomas George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film and television director
DATE OF BIRTH 1st October 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH London