26 Facts About Mark Romanek

Mark Lee Romanek is an American film, music video and commercial director and photographer.

Mark Romanek is best known for directing the films One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go.

Mark Romanek has directed episodes for television series such as The Whispers, Vinyl, and Tales from the Loop.

Mark Lee Romanek was born in Chicago on September 18,1959, the son of Jewish parents Shirlee and Marvin Romanek.

Mark Romanek was inspired to become a filmmaker by seeing Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey as a child.

Mark Romanek experimented with Super 8 mm and 16 mm film as a teenager.

Mark Romanek attended New Trier High School, where he studied under Kevin Dole, who was already creating music videos on his own in the mid-1970s, and Peter Kingsbury.

Mark Romanek served as second assistant director on Brian De Palma's film Home Movies, an autobiographical work conceived as an exercise for De Palma's students at Sarah Lawrence College, where he was once a student himself.

Mark Romanek met actor Keith Gordon, who played De Palma's alter ego, on the set of the film; Gordon later remembered Mark Romanek's entrance into film production:.

Mark Romanek showed me his short films, which I thought were really good and showed a lot of visual flair.

Mark Romanek worked again with Nine Inch Nails for the song "The Perfect Drug".

Mark Romanek directed the music videos for David Bowie's 1993 singles "Jump They Say" and "Black Tie White Noise".

Mark Romanek was given his first Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video in 1996 for "Scream", a collaboration between the pop superstar siblings Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson.

Mark Romanek won his second Grammy two years later, again with Janet Jackson, for her video "Got 'til It's Gone".

In 2002, Mark Romanek shot a video for Audioslave's "Cochise" in which the band performed in the midst of a prolonged pyrotechnic display of the intensity usually seen only during fireworks finale.

In 1997, Mark Romanek received the VMA Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for his contribution to the medium.

Mark Romanek then directed "Filthy" by Justin Timberlake and "Rescue Me" by Thirty Seconds to Mars, which both premiered in 2018.

In 2022, Mark Romanek directed a 180-degree virtual reality concert for Foo Fighters, featuring a song by the group never before played.

In 2002, Mark Romanek wrote and directed his second feature film, One Hour Photo, starring Robin Williams as a department store photo processor who becomes obsessed with a local family through the photographs they bring to him to be developed.

Mark Romanek has dismissed this story stating that there never was a director's cut and that the studio did not exercise any editorial control.

Mark Romanek had hoped to follow the film with an adaptation of Philip Gourevitch's A Cold Case which was to star Tom Hanks as chief investigator Andy Rosenzweig.

In 2008, after Mark Romanek left as the director of The Wolfman due to creative differences, he accepted the offer to work on Never Let Me Go.

Mark Romanek has been recognized for his photography skills, having taken pictures of various celebrities he befriended throughout his career.

Mark Romanek has said that while the photographs are all of famous people, he still considers them personal.

In 2017, thirty of Mark Romanek's photographs were exhibited at the French retailer Colette for the series entitled SNAPSHOTS.

Mark Romanek married singer Brigette McWilliams in 2005, and they had two daughters together before divorcing in 2022.