Director's Chair: Robert Zemeckis

2 weeks ago 06th Nov 14:41

Robert Zemeckis is a filmmaker who has been behind some of the best movies of the last twenty five years.

A this week he returns with another stunner in the form of animation movie A Christmas Carol, which boasts the voice of Jim Carrey in the lead role of Scrooge.

Despite his parents disapproving at his decision to go to film school Zemeckis applied for University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts where he got into the Film School.

Before graduating in 1973 he won the Student Academy Award for his movie A Field of Honour and it was through this he came to the attention of Steven Spielberg and he took the young filmmaker under his wing.

With Spielberg acting as producer on his first two movies I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars, the former being his debut in 1978, they were both met well critically but they struggled at the box office.

Over the next few years he struggled to get work in the early eighties until Romancing the Stone came along and changed his career.

Starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner the movie was expected to be another box office failure for the filmmaker but instead became a sleeper hit.

He star began to rise even more with his next project Back to the Future, which was produced once again by Spielberg and starred Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.

Fox stars as Marty McFly, a restless '80s teen who takes a ride in Doc Brown’s (Lloyd) "flux capacitor"-rigged DeLorean and ends up in 1955.

Once on the ground, Marty meets his teenaged mother (Lea Thompson) and accidentally wins her affections, thereby threatening the relationship she’s supposed to form with his father (Crispin Glover).

Now it’s a do-or-never-be-born situation: Marty must get his parents to fall in love before Doc Brown can send him back to the proper decade.

The movie was a huge hit and grossing over $320 million it was the biggest movie of 1985 and it spawned two more movies in 1989 and 1990.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was next for Zemeckis which was, at the time, the most expensive films made with a $70 budget. But it easily made it's budget back with a $329.8 million before going on to win four Oscars.

More success followed with Death Become Her, a black comedy starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis but it was 1994' Forrest Gump that really made his name.

Starring Tom Hanks in the title role the movie was a huge success and brought Zemeckis major awards success.

Tom Hanks won Best Actor for the second year in a row, he won in 1993 for Philadelphia, and the movie also won Best Picture.

But there was also a Best Director gong for Zemeckis who saw off competition from Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Robert Redford.

Since the turn of the century Zemeckis has teamed up with Hanks on two more occasions; Cast Away and The Polar Express, both of which were successful at the box office.

The filmmaker stayed with animation for his next project Beowulf, three years after The Polar Express, a motion capture movie starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie.