Tim Burton

Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American director, producer, writer, and animator.

Known for pioneering goth culture in the American film industry, Burton is famous for his gothic horror and fantasy films.

He has received numerous accolades including an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and three BAFTA Awards.

Burton was born on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California, the son of Jean Burton (née Erickson, 1933–2002), later the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and William "Bill" Burton (1930–2000), a former minor league baseball player who was working for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department.

As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard at 2101 North Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques or shooting on 8 mm film without sound (one of his oldest known juvenile films is The Island of Doctor Agor, which he made when he was 13 years old).

Burton attended Providencia Elementary School, Luther Middle School, and Burbank High School, but was not a particularly good student.

He played on the water polo team at Burbank High.

Burton was an introspective person and found pleasure in artwork, painting, drawing, and watching movies.

His future work would be heavily influenced by the works of such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.

After graduating from Burbank High School in 1976, Burton attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Santa Clarita, to study character animation.

As a student at CalArts, Burton made the shorts Stalk of the Celery Monster and King and Octopus.

Stalk of the Celery Monster attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions, which offered Burton an animator's apprenticeship at its animation division.

He worked as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer, art director, and concept artist on films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981), Tron (1982), and The Black Cauldron (1985).

His concept art never made it into the finished films.

While at Disney in 1982, Burton made his first short, Vincent, a six-minute black-and-white stop motion film based on a poem written by Burton, which depicts a young boy who fantasizes that he is his hero Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration.

The film was produced by Rick Heinrichs, whom Burton had befriended while working in the concept art department at Disney.

The film was shown at the Chicago Film Festival and released, alongside the teen drama Tex, for two weeks in one Los Angeles cinema.

This was followed by Burton's first live-action production, Hansel and Gretel, a Japanese-themed adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale for the Disney Channel, which climaxes in a kung fu fight between Hansel and Gretel and the witch.

Having aired once in 1983 at 10:30 pm on Halloween and promptly shelved, prints of the film are extremely difficult to locate, fueling rumors that the project did not exist.

Burton's next live-action short film, Frankenweenie, was released in 1984.

It tells the story of a young boy who tries to revive his dog after it is run over by a car.

Burton made his directorial film debut with the comedy Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and gained prominence for Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990).

Additionally, Burton directed episodes of the 1985 revival of the '50s/'60s anthology horror series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre.

Filmed in black-and-white, it stars Barret Oliver, Shelley Duvall (with whom he would work again in 1986, directing an episode of her television series Faerie Tale Theatre), and Daniel Stern.

After Frankenweenie was completed, Disney fired Burton, under the pretext of him spending the company's resources on a film that would be too dark and scary for children to see.

Burton directed his next big project: Beetlejuice (1988), a supernatural comedy horror about a young couple forced to cope with life after death and the family of pretentious yuppies who invade their treasured New England home.

Their teenage daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), has an obsession with death which allows her to see the deceased couple.

Starring Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, and featuring Michael Keaton as the obnoxious bio-exorcist Beetlejuice, the film grossed $80 million on a relatively low budget and won an Academy Award for Best Makeup.

Burton also directed the superhero films Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), the animated films Corpse Bride (2005) and Frankenweenie (2012), the science fiction films Mars Attacks! (1996) and Planet of the Apes (2001), the supernatural horror film Sleepy Hollow (1999), the fantasy-dramas Big Fish (2003), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dark Shadows (2012), and Dumbo (2019), and the musicals Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and the biographical dramas Ed Wood (1994) and Big Eyes (2014).

Starting in 2022 Burton has directed several episodes for Netflix series Wednesday, for which he received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series.

Burton has frequently collaborated with Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter (his former domestic partner), Catherine O’Hara, Eva Green and Christopher Lee as well with composer Danny Elfman, who scored all but three of Burton's films.

Burton has released several books including The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997).

Actor Paul Reubens saw Frankenweenie and chose Burton to direct the cinematic spin-off of his popular character Pee-wee Herman, stating on the audio commentary of 2000 DVD release of Pee-wee's Big Adventure that as soon as the short began, he was sold on Burton's style.

Pee-wee Herman gained mainstream popularity with a successful stage show at The Groundlings and the Roxy which was later turned into an HBO special.

The film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, was made on a budget of $8 million and grossed more than $40 million at the North American box office.

Burton, a fan of the eccentric musical group Oingo Boingo, asked songwriter Danny Elfman to provide the music for the film.

Since then, Elfman has scored every film that Tim Burton has directed, except for Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

He was honored with the Venice International Film Festival's Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2007 and was given the Order of the Arts and Letters by Culture Minister of France in 2010.

The short would finally go on public display in 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art, and again in 2011 as part of the Tim Burton art exhibit at LACMA.

It was again shown at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2012.