Joel Coen

Their mother, Rena (née Neumann; 1925–2001), was an art historian at St. Cloud State University, and their father, Edward Coen (1919–2012), was a Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota.

The brothers have an older sister, Deborah, who is a psychiatrist in Israel.

Both sides of the Coen family were Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews.

Their paternal grandfather, Victor Coen, was a barrister in the Inns of Court in London before retiring to Hove with their grandmother.

Edward Coen was an American citizen born in the United States, but grew up in Croydon, London and studied at the London School of Economics.

Afterwards he moved to the United States, where he met the Coens' mother, and served in the United States Army during World War II.

The Coens developed an early interest in cinema through television.

They grew up watching Italian films (ranging from the works of Federico Fellini to the Sons of Hercules films) aired on a Minneapolis station, the Tarzan films, and comedies (Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Doris Day).

The 1943 film Lassie Come Home was reinterpreted as their Ed... A Dog, with Ethan playing the mother role in his sister's tutu.

They also made original films like Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, Lumberjacks of the North and The Banana Film.

Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), collectively known as the Coen brothers, are an American filmmaking duo.

Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody.

Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.

In the mid-1960s, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera.

Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with their neighborhood friend Mark Zimering ("Zeimers") as the star.

Cornel Wilde's 1965 film The Naked Prey became their Zeimers in Zambezi, which featured Ethan as a native with a spear.

Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976, respectively, and from Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

After Simon's Rock, Joel spent four years in the undergraduate film program at New York University, where he made a 30-minute thesis film called Soundings.

In 1979, he briefly enrolled in the graduate film program at the University of Texas at Austin, following a woman he had married who was in the graduate linguistics program.

The marriage soon ended in divorce and Joel left UT Austin after nine months.

Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1979.

His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy", which was supervised by Raymond Geuss.

Their most acclaimed works include Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).

Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.

The brothers generally write, direct and produce their films jointly.

The duo started directing solo pieces with Joel's The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) and Ethan's Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (2022) and Drive-Away Dolls (2024).

Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984.

The duo also won the Palme d'Or for Barton Fink at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1993.

They have two children: daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob.

The two describe their relationship as “nontraditional”; Cooke identifies as both queer and a lesbian and Ethan as straight, and the two have separate partners.

In 1995, they adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, from Paraguay when he was six months old.

McDormand has acted in several Coen brothers films: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, Burn After Reading, and Hail, Caesar! For her performance in Fargo, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Fargo among the 100 greatest American movies ever made.

Until The Ladykillers (2004) Joel had received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing, and they shared editing credits under an alias, Roderick Jaynes.

They have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards together and individually for one award each; both won Best Original Screenplay for Fargo, and Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men.

The Coens have written a number of films they did not direct, including Angelina Jolie's biographical war drama Unbroken (2014), Steven Spielberg's historical cold war film Bridge of Spies (2015), and lesser-known, commercially unsuccessful comedies such as Crimewave (1985), The Naked Man (1998), and Gambit (2012).

Ethan is also a writer of short stories, theater, and poetry.

They are known for their distinctive stylistic trademarks including genre hybridity.

No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis have been ranked in the BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000.