52 Facts About Christopher Nolan

1.

Christopher Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age.

2.

Christopher Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

3.

Christopher Nolan's work is permeated with mathematically inspired images and concepts, unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format film photography, and materialistic perspectives.

4.

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

5.

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

6.

Christopher Nolan's father, Brendan, was a British advertising executive who worked as a creative director.

7.

Christopher Nolan's mother, Christina, was an American flight attendant from Evanston, Illinois; she would later work as a teacher of English.

8.

Christopher Nolan has an elder brother, Matthew, and a younger brother, Jonathan, a filmmaker.

9.

Christopher Nolan began making films at the age of seven, borrowing his father's Super8 camera and shooting short films with his action figures.

10.

Christopher Nolan cast his brother Jonathan and built sets from "clay, flour, egg boxes and toilet rolls".

11.

Between 1981 and 1983, Christopher Nolan enrolled at Barrow Hills, a Catholic prep school in Weybridge, Surrey.

12.

Christopher 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.

13.

Christopher Nolan chose UCL specifically for its filmmaking facilities, which comprised a Steenbeck editing suite and 16mm film cameras.

14.

Christopher Nolan was president of the Union's Film Society, and with Emma Thomas he screened feature films of 35 mm during the school year and used the money earned to produce 16mm films over the summers.

15.

Christopher Nolan directed, wrote and edited the short film Larceny, which was filmed over a weekend in black and white with limited equipment and a small cast and crew.

16.

Christopher Nolan filmed a third short, Doodlebug, about a man seemingly chasing an insect with his shoe, only to discover that it is a miniature of himself.

17.

Shortly after abandoning Larry Mahoney, Christopher Nolan conceived the idea for his first feature, Following, which he wrote, directed, photographed and edited.

18.

Jonathan worked the idea into a short story, "Memento Mori", and Christopher Nolan developed it into a screenplay that told the story in reverse.

19.

Christopher Nolan reluctantly tabled his script after learning that Martin Scorsese was already making one such film: The Aviator.

20.

Christopher Nolan turned down an offer to direct the historical epic Troy.

21.

Christopher Nolan was fascinated by the notion of grounding it in a more realistic world than a comic-book fantasy.

22.

Christopher Nolan relied heavily on traditional stunts and miniature effects during filming, with minimal use of computer-generated imagery.

23.

Batman Begins, the biggest project Christopher Nolan had undertaken to that point, was released to critical acclaim and commercial success.

24.

Christopher Nolan initially intended to make the film as early as 2003, but had postponed the project after agreeing to make Batman Begins.

25.

Christopher Nolan received many awards and nominations for his work on the film.

26.

Christopher Nolan described the film as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind".

27.

Christopher Nolan was nominated for a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, among other accolades.

28.

Christy Lemire of HuffPost wrote in her review that Christopher Nolan concluded his trilogy in a "typically spectacular, ambitious fashion", but disliked the "overloaded" story and excessive grimness.

29.

Christopher Nolan released a statement expressing his condolences for the victims of what he described as a "senseless tragedy".

30.

Christopher Nolan next directed, wrote and produced the science-fiction film Interstellar.

31.

Christopher Nolan initiated a theatrical tour, showcasing the Quays' In Absentia, The Comb and Street of Crocodiles.

32.

Christopher Nolan said he waited to make Dunkirk until he had earned the trust of a major studio to let him make it as a British film but with an American budget.

33.

In 2018, Christopher Nolan supervised a new 70mm print of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, made from the original camera negative; he presented it at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

34.

Christopher Nolan had worked on the screenplay for more than five years after deliberating about its central ideas for over a decade.

35.

Christopher Nolan served as an executive producer on Zack Snyder's Justice League, a director's cut of 2017's Justice League.

36.

Christopher Nolan was disillusioned with the latter's decision to simultaneously release their films in theatres and on HBO Max.

37.

Christopher Nolan is married to Emma Thomas, whom he met at University College London when he was 19.

38.

Christopher Nolan has worked as a producer on all of his films since 1997.

39.

Rarely granting promotional interviews about his films, Christopher Nolan prefers to maintain a certain level of mystery about his work.

40.

Christopher Nolan was physically assaulted by fellow filmmaker David O Russell in 2003 at a party in Hollywood.

41.

Christopher Nolan's films are majorly centred in metaphysical themes, exploring the concepts of time, memory and personal identity.

42.

Christopher Nolan's work is characterised by mathematically inspired ideas and images, unconventional narrative structures, materialistic perspectives, and evocative use of music and sound.

43.

David Bordwell, a film theorist, opined that Christopher Nolan has been able to blend his "experimental impulses" with the demands of mainstream entertainment, describing his oeuvre as "experiments with cinematic time by means of techniques of subjective viewpoint and crosscutting".

44.

Christopher Nolan has made some of the most influential and popular films of his time.

45.

Christopher Nolan's work has been as "intensely embraced, analysed and debated by ordinary film fans as by critics and film academics".

46.

Andrew wrote that Christopher Nolan's films are "not so much [notable] for their considerable technical virtuosity and visual flair as for their brilliant narrative ingenuity and their unusually adult interest in complex philosophical questions".

47.

David Bordwell observed that Christopher Nolan is "considered one of the most accomplished living filmmakers", citing his ability to turn genre movies into both art and event films, as well as his box office numbers, critical acclaim and popularity among cinemagoers.

48.

Christopher Nolan has been praised by many of his contemporaries, and his work has influenced them.

49.

Christopher Nolan has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five British Academy Film Awards and six Golden Globe Awards.

50.

Christopher Nolan was named an Honorary Fellow of UCL in 2006, and conferred an honorary doctorate in literature in 2017.

51.

Christopher Nolan appeared in Time 100 most influential people in the world in 2015.

52.

Christopher Nolan was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film.