Christopher Nolan

Sir Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) 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 (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), and transitioned into studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002). He became a high-profile director with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012) and found further success with The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017). After the release of Tenet (2020), Nolan parted ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures and signed with Universal Pictures for Oppenheimer (2023), which won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

Three of his films have been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. Infused with a metaphysical outlook, Nolan's work 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 (1936–2009), was a British advertising executive of Irish descent who worked as a creative director. His mother, Christina Jensen (born 1942), 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.

Growing up, Nolan was particularly influenced by the work of Sir Ridley Scott and the science fiction films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). 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 Super 8 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 8 mm Tarantella (1989), 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 (UCL). 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 16 mm film cameras. Nolan was president of the Union's Film Society, and with Emma Thomas (his girlfriend and future wife) he screened feature films in 35mm during the school year and used the money earned to produce 16 mm 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 (Nolan in 2006, Thomas in 2013), 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 (1996), 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 (1997), 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, "[T]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 (1998), which he wrote, directed, photographed and edited. The film depicts an unemployed young writer (Jeremy Theobald) 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."