1. Lee Daniels was born on December 24,1959 and is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter.
25 Facts About Lee Daniels
1. 2.
Lee Daniels made his directorial film debut with Shadowboxer, followed by Precious which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture.
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Lee Daniels has since directed The Paperboy, The Butler, The United States vs Billie Holiday, and The Deliverance.
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Lee Daniels produced the films Monster's Ball, The Woodsman, Tennessee, Pimp, and Concrete Cowboy.
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Lee Daniels was born on December 24,1959, in West Philadelphia, the eldest son of Clara May and William Louis Lee Daniels.
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Lee Daniels's younger sister, Leah Daniels-Butler, is a television and film casting director credited with casting many of his projects.
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When Daniels was a teenager, his mother arranged for a neighbor's family who was a butler for the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team to use that owner's address in Radnor so that Lee could attend the public Radnor High School.
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In 1975, when Lee Daniels was 15 years old, his father, who was a police officer, was killed in the line of duty.
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Lee Daniels began his career in entertainment as a casting director and manager after a chance meeting with a Hollywood producer, working on such projects as Purple Rain and Under the Cherry Moon.
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Monster's Ball, the debut production of Lee Daniels Entertainment, was a critical and box office success.
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Lee Daniels said he did not attend the Oscars when the film won, citing his challenges with addiction and his struggle over whether he "deserved" to attend, according to an emotional interview on MSNBC in 2019.
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Lee Daniels served as one of the producers of the 2004 film The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and Mos Def, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
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Former president Bill Clinton persuaded Lee Daniels to produce public service announcements to encourage young people of color to vote.
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Lee Daniels produced the 2008 film Tennessee, which was written by Russell Schaumberg and directed by Aaron Woodley ; the film is about two brothers, played by Adam Rothenberg and Ethan Peck, who travel from New Mexico to Tennessee to search for their estranged father.
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Mo'Nique won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Lee Daniels was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the film received a Best Picture nomination.
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Lee Daniels directed The Paperboy, based on the 1995 novel by Pete Dexter who penned the original script which was further developed by Lee Daniels; it starred Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, John Cusack, and Nicole Kidman.
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Lee Daniels directed the historical drama film The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Mariah Carey, Terrence Howard, Alan Rickman, and Oprah Winfrey.
18.
Empire, a television series created by Lee Daniels, premiered on January 7,2015.
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Lee Daniels directed the first episode and co-wrote it with The Butler screenwriter Danny Strong.
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In May 2021, Daniels and his production company Lee Daniels Entertainment had extended its overall deal with 20th Television.
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In 2015, Lee Daniels was listed as one of the nine runners-up for The Advocate's Person of the Year.
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On December 2,2016, Lee Daniels received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the television industry.
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Lee Daniels stated that as a gifted creative force, he creates "unfailingly human" characters, who are "often striving to rise above difficult circumstances".
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On September 16,2015, in a Rolling Stone interview, Lee Daniels was asked about actor Terrence Howard who said that his first wife "was talking to him real strong, that he lost his mind and slapped her in front of their kids" and that he got physical with his second wife too.
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Lee Daniels excused the domestic violence and called Howard a "poor boy", saying that Howard "ain't done nothing different than Marlon Brando or Sean Penn".