James Marsh | |
|---|---|
 Marsh in 2009 | |
| Born | 30 April 1963 |
| Alma mater | St Catherine's College, Oxford |
| Occupation(s) | Director, author |
| Children | 2 |
James Marsh (born 30 April 1963) is a British film and documentary director best known for his work on Man on Wire , which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and The Theory of Everything , the multi-award-winning biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking released in 2014. [1]
Marsh was born in Truro, Cornwall and raised in Sennen, a Cornish village, and Woolwich, a district in southeast London. In Woolwich, he lived in a "miserable council flat" with his family. [2]
Marsh won a scholarship to the University of Oxford. [2] As an undergraduate, he studied at St Catherine's College, Oxford and graduated with a degree in English. [3]
Marsh began his early career in directing with several documentaries made for the BBC. His first TV documentary was the 90-minute Troubleman – The Last Years of Marvin Gaye, and was followed by the 26-minute 1990 documentary The Animator of Prague starring Jan Švankmajer and his works. Later came The Burger and the King: The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, which was made in 1995 and released in 1996, and the Welsh musician John Cale, which was made in 1998 and released in 1999. His relationship continued with the BBC as a director and producer for three Arena series episodes, including the celebrated film Wisconsin Death Trip (1999). [4]
In 2005 he directed the film The King which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. [5]
In 2008 he made the documentary Man on Wire , about Philippe Petit's walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Marsh based Man on Wire, in part, on Philippe Petit’s memoir To Reach the Clouds. Man on Wire won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 81st annual Oscars, the BAFTA Award for Best British film, the Independent Spirit Award, and many others. The film, called "exhilarating", has had a hugely positive audience response and was among the Top Ten Films of 2008 on many critics' lists.
In 2009, he directed the "1980" episode of Red Riding , which aired on Channel 4 in the UK.
He also directed Project Nim in 2010, which is based on the book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess. It is a documentary about the landmark study conducted by Herbert S. Terrace on the subject of animal language acquisition and the subject of the study is a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky. Marsh watched different films to gain inspiration before making Project Nim. He watched E.T., Frederick Wiseman's Primate, and the Bresson film Au hasard Balthazar . He gained the most information from Au hasard Balthazar which is a fictional account of a donkey as it passes through various human owners. The structure of Project Nim reflects a lot from this film as we see the drama of the human world through the eyes of the chimpanzee. [6]
In 2012, he directed Shadow Dancer , [7] a joint Irish/UK production about the Irish republican movement, which was filmed in Dublin and London. The film features Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson, Domhnall Gleeson and Aidan Gillen.
Marsh directed The Theory of Everything released in 2014, a biopic on Stephen Hawking starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. [8] Marsh received a nomination for the BAFTA for Best Director and the film was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture.
Marsh currently lives in Copenhagen with his two daughters and his wife. [2] [9]
Films
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | The Team | No | Yes | |
| The King | Yes | Yes | ||
| 2012 | Shadow Dancer | Yes | No | |
| 2014 | The Theory of Everything | Yes | No | BAFTA nomination for Best Direction |
| 2017 | The Mercy | Yes | No | |
| 2018 | King of Thieves | Yes | No | |
| 2023 | Dance First | Yes | No | [10] |
Television
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Red Riding | Yes | No | Limited series; "Red Riding: 1980" |
| 2016 | The Night Of | Yes | No | Miniseries, "The Art of War"; Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special |
Documentary films
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Wisconsin Death Trip | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2008 | Man on Wire | Yes | No | No |
| 2011 | Project Nim | Yes | No | No |
| List of awards and nominations | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Award / film Festival | Category | Work | Result | Ref(s) |
| 2000 | San Sebastian Film Festival | San Sebastián International Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize – Special Mention | Wisconsin Death Trip | Won | |
| Stockholm Film Festival | Stockholm Film Festival Bronze Horse | Nominated | |||
| 2001 | BAFTA Award | BAFTA TV Award for Specialised Programme or Series | Nominated | ||
| 2006 | Gotham Awards | Breakthrough Director | The King | Nominated | |
| Philadelphia Film Festival | Philadelphia Film Festival American Independents Award | Won | |||
| 2008 | Alliance of Women Film Journalists | Best Documentary | Man on Wire | Won | [11] |
| Directors Guild of America | Best Director - Documentary | Nominated | |||
| European Film Awards | Best Documentary | Nominated | |||
| Gotham Independent Film Awards 2008 | Best Documentary | Nominated | |||
| 2009 | Academy Awards | Best Documentary | Man on Wire | Won | [12] |
| BAFTA Award | Best British Film | Won | [13] | ||
| Cinema Eye Honors | Best Film-Making | Won | [14] | ||
| Best Director | Nominated | ||||
| Audience Choice Prize | Nominated | ||||
| Independent Spirit Awards | Best Documentary | Won | [15] | ||
| 2011 | Alliance of Women Film Journalists | Best Documentary | Project Nim | Nominated | |
| Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 2011 | Best Documentary | Won | [16] | ||
| Directors Guild of America | Best Director - Documentary | Won | [17] | ||
| 2012 | BAFTA Award | Best Documentary | Project Nim | Nominated | |
| Cinema Eye Honors | Best Film-Making | Nominated | |||
| Audience Choice Prize | Nominated | ||||
| Evening Standard British Film Awards | Best Documentary | Nominated | |||
| Dinard British Film Festival | Golden Hitchcock Award | Shadow Dancer | Won | [18] | |
| Audience Award | Won | [18] | |||
| Edinburgh International Film Festival | Best Feature Film | Nominated | |||
| Film by the Sea International Film Festival | Film Award | Nominated | |||
| 2013 | Humanitas Prize | Best Documentary | Man on Wire | Nominated | |
| 2015 | BAFTA Award | Best British Film | The Theory of Everything | Won | [19] |
| Best Director | Nominated | ||||
| 2016 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special | The Night Of | Nominated | |
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican filmmaker. He is primarily known for making modern psychological drama films about the human condition. His projects have garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades including four Academy Awards with a Special Achievement Award, three Golden Globe Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Directors Guild of America Awards. His most notable films include Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Babel (2006), Biutiful (2010), Birdman (2014), The Revenant (2015), and Bardo (2022).
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Anne Wiazemsky was a French actress and novelist. She made her cinema debut at the age of 18, playing Marie, the lead character in Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966). A year later she married the director Jean-Luc Godard and appeared in several of his films, including La Chinoise (1967), Week End (1967), and One Plus One (1968).
Au Hasard Balthazar, also known as Balthazar, is a 1966 French tragedy film directed by Robert Bresson. Believed to be inspired by a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1868–69 novel The Idiot, the film follows a donkey as he is given to various owners, most of whom treat him callously.
Felicity Rose Hadley Jones is an English actress. She started her professional acting career as a child, appearing in The Treasure Seekers (1996) at age 12. She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one series of the television series The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College. On radio, she has played the role of Emma Grundy in the BBC's The Archers. In 2008, she appeared in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden.
Nicolas Winding Refn, also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Edward John David "Eddie" Redmayne is an English actor. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Olivier Awards.
Paolo Sorrentino is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Italian cinema working today. He is known for visually striking and complex dramas and has often been compared to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award two Cannes Film Festival prizes, four Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. In Italy he was honoured with eight David di Donatello and six Nastro d'Argento.
Anthony McCarten is a New Zealand writer and filmmaker. He is best known for writing big-budget biopics The Theory of Everything (2014), Darkest Hour (2017), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), The Two Popes (2019), and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022). McCarten has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including twice for Best Adapted Screenplay, for The Theory of Everything and The Two Popes.
Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance lasted for almost an hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
James Kicklighter is an American film director, producer, and writer from Bellville, Georgia.
Tahar Rahim is a French actor. His breakthrough performance was in the 2009 French film A Prophet, for which he won the César Award for Best Actor and Most Promising Actor. He then starred as FBI agent Ali Soufan in the miniseries The Looming Tower and Judas in the film Mary Magdalene.
Project Nim is a 2011 documentary film directed by James Marsh. It tells the life story of a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky, who was the center of a research project that was mounted in the 1970s to determine whether a primate raised in close contact with humans would develop a limited "language" based on American Sign Language.
Pablo Larraín Matte is a Chilean filmmaker. He is known for films such as the Academy Award-nominated films No (2012), Neruda (2016), Jackie (2016), and Spencer (2021). In 2017, Larraín and his brother Juan de Dios co-produced Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman, which was the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2021, Larrain directed the psychological romance horror miniseries Lisey's Story.
The Theory of Everything is a 2014 biographical romantic drama film directed by James Marsh. Set at the University of Cambridge, it details the life of the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. It was adapted by Anthony McCarten from the 2007 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and his success in the field of physics. The film stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, with Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, Christian McKay, Harry Lloyd, and David Thewlis featured in supporting roles. The film had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on 7 November 2014. It had its UK premiere on 1 January 2015.
Brett D. Morgen is an American documentary filmmaker. His directorial credits include The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), Crossfire Hurricane (2012), Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015), Jane (2017), and Moonage Daydream (2022).
The 68th British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs, were held on 8 February 2015 at the Royal Opera House in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2014. Presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, accolades were handed out for the best feature-length film and documentaries of any nationality that were screened at British cinemas in 2014.
The Theory of Everything (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the score album composed by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson to the 2014 film of the same name released on 4 November 2014 by Back Lot Music. The score relies on neo-classical themes more than "the decades' respective earmark sounds of the British invasion", punk music and synthpop, while including "[Jóhannsson's] signature blend of acoustic instruments and electronics". The music was acclaimed by critics, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, alongside receiving nominations Academy Award for Best Original Score, a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
