Christopher Nolan

Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century.

His films have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide, ranking him amongst the highest-grossing directors in history.

Nolan is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards.

Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is a British and American filmmaker.

Christopher Edward Nolan was born on 30 July 1970, in Westminster, London.

His father, Brendan James Nolan, was a British advertising executive of Irish descent who worked as a creative director.

His mother, Christina Jensen, was an American flight attendant from Evanston, Illinois; she would later work 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 would spend their summers in Evanston.

Nolan holds both UK and US citizenship.

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 8mm Tarantella (1989), which was shown on Image Union, an independent film and video showcase on the Public Broadcasting Service.

After a fan posted a copy of Tarantella online, in 2021, 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 16mm 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 16mm films over the summers.

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.

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).

Growing up, Nolan was particularly influenced by the work of 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 Super8 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.

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).

Nolan won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for the biographical thriller Oppenheimer (2023).

Nolan's work regularly features in the listings of best films of their respective decades.

Infused with a metaphysical outlook, his films 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.

He has co-written several of his films with his brother, Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife, Emma Thomas.

In 2015, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and in 2024, he was honoured with the British Film Institute Fellowship.

Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age.