96 Facts About Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone was born on September 15,1946 and is an American filmmaker.

Oliver Stone has received numerous accolades including three Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and five Golden Globe Awards.

Oliver Stone was born in New York City and later briefly attended Yale University.

In 1967, Oliver Stone enlisted in the United States Army during the Vietnam War.

Oliver Stone served from 1967 to 1968 in the 25th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions and was twice wounded in action.

Oliver Stone started his film career writing the screenplays for Midnight Express, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Conan the Barbarian ; and Scarface.

Many of Oliver Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases.

Oliver Stone has been critical of the American foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by nationalist and imperialist agendas.

Oliver Stone has approved of politicians Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, the latter of whom was the subject of The Putin Interviews.

Oliver Stone's parents met in his mother's hometown of Paris during World War II where his father, a US Army colonel, served as a financial officer on General Eisenhower's staff.

Oliver Stone's aunt was author and editor Babette Rosmond and his cousins are writer Gene Stone and former chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission James Stone.

Oliver Stone was raised in the Episcopal Church and now practices Buddhism.

Oliver Stone attended kindergarten through eighth grade at Trinity School in New York City before being sent to The Hill School, a college-preparatory boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

Oliver Stone's father was awarded sole physical and legal custody and, because his mother was often absent, his father had a dominant influence on his life.

Oliver Stone often spent summers with his maternal grandparents in France, both in Paris and La Ferte-sous-Jouarre in Seine-et-Marne, where he was fascinated by his grandfather's stories of serving in the French Army during World War I At 17, Stone worked as a runner in the Paris Commodities Exchange, a job that later proved inspirational for his film Wall Street.

Oliver Stone graduated from The Hill School in 1964 and was admitted to Yale University, but left in June 1965 at age 18 to teach high school students English for six months in Saigon at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam.

Oliver Stone returned to Yale, where he dropped out a second time.

In October 1967, Oliver Stone was medevaced after being shot in the neck during a night ambush, a wound which nearly severed his jugular vein.

Oliver Stone was then transferred to the 1st Cavalry Division, participating in long-range reconnaissance patrols, before being transferred permanently to Troop D, 1st Squadron of the 9th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cav.

On June 30,1969, the French news program Voila interviewed a then-unknown Oliver Stone while filming "on the street" interviews about the war in Central Park.

Oliver Stone's PTSD was compounded by a violent mugging he experienced in the East Village in the summer of 1969, during which he sustained defensive knife wounds.

Oliver Stone has described long-term physical complications from his military service, specifically combat induced hearing loss and tinnitus, minor discomfort from shrapnel still embedded in his body, and fertility issues he believes were caused by Agent Orange exposure.

Oliver Stone is an honorary board member of the nonprofit organizations Veterans for Peace and The National Veterans Foundation.

In Scorsese's class, Oliver Stone made a short, well received 12-minute film about a disabled veteran, Last Year in Viet Nam.

Oliver Stone worked as a taxi driver, production assistant, messenger, and salesman before making his mark in film as a screenwriter in the late 1970's.

In 1979, Oliver Stone was awarded his first Oscar, after adapting true-life prison story Midnight Express into the successful film of the same name for British director Alan Parker.

Oliver Stone continued to write feature films, including Brian De Palma's drug lord epic Scarface, loosely inspired by his own addiction to cocaine, which he successfully kicked while working on the screenplay.

Oliver Stone penned Year of the Dragon featuring Mickey Rourke, before his career took off as a writer-director in 1986.

In 1986, Oliver Stone directed two films back to back: the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Salvador, shot largely in Mexico, and his long in-development Vietnam project Platoon, shot in the Philippines.

Immediately following the success of Platoon, Oliver Stone co-wrote and directed another hit, 1987's Wall Street, starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas, who received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko.

The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and Oliver Stone received his third Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Director.

In 1990, Oliver Stone produced the Oscar-winning movie Reversal of Fortune.

However, she later wrote in her memoir Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison that Oliver Stone ignored her feedback and proceeded with his own version of events.

In 1994, Oliver Stone co-wrote and directed Natural Born Killers, a violent crime film intended to satirize the modern media.

That same year, Oliver Stone appeared in a cameo as himself in the presidential comedy Dave and produced The Joy Luck Club, the second American film to feature a majority Asian cast telling a contemporary Asian-American story.

Oliver Stone went on to co-write and direct the 1995 Richard Nixon biopic Nixon, which received Oscar nominations for the script, John Williams' score, Joan Allen's performance as Pat Nixon and Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the title role.

In 1996, Oliver Stone produced the films Freeway and The People vs Larry Flynt and was credited as co-writer of Evita.

Oliver Stone finished the decade by co-writing and directing the 1997 film noir U Turn and 1999's Any Given Sunday, a film about power struggles within an American football team.

Oliver Stone first released his historical epic Alexander in 2004, but it was a notorious box office flop.

Oliver Stone later re-edited it into a two-part, 3-hour 37-minute film Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, which became one of the highest-selling catalog items from Warner Bros.

Oliver Stone further refined the film and in 2014 released the two-part, 3-hour 26-minute Alexander: The Ultimate Cut.

In 2010, Oliver Stone directed his only sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

In 2016, Oliver Stone directed Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as whistleblower Edward Snowden.

On May 22,2017, various industry papers announced that Oliver Stone was going to direct his first scripted television series about the Guantanamo detention camp for Weinstein Television.

In 2020, Oliver Stone announced his semi-retirement from film-making, though he still occasionally makes documentaries.

Also in 2024, Oliver Stone donated his archives to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Also in 2003, Oliver Stone made Persona Non Grata, an HBO documentary on Israeli-Palestinian relations, in which he interviewed several notable Israeli leaders, including Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres, as well as Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In 2009, Oliver Stone completed a feature-length documentary, South of the Border about the rise of leftist governments in Latin America, featuring seven presidents: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Cuba's Raul Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, all of whom are critical of US foreign policy in South America.

Oliver Stone hoped the film would get the rest of the Western world to rethink socialist policies in South America, particularly as it was being applied by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Oliver Stone defended his decision not to interview Chavez's opponents, stating that oppositional statements and TV clips were scattered through the documentary and that the documentary was an attempt to right a balance of heavily negative coverage.

Oliver Stone praised Chavez as a leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, a movement for social transformation in Latin America, and praised the six other presidents in the film.

Oliver Stone was interviewed in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains 2, which deals with neoliberal reforms in the Balkans.

In 2016, Oliver Stone was executive producer and interviewer for Ukrainian-born director Igor Lopatonok's film Ukraine on Fire.

Oliver Stone filmed a series of interviews with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the span of two years, which was released as The Putin Interviews, a four episode miniseries, on Showtime on June 12,2017.

In 2019, he released Revealing Ukraine, another film produced by Oliver Stone, directed by Lopatonok and featuring Oliver Stone interviewing Putin.

In 2022, Stone directed and co-wrote Nuclear Now, a climate change documentary based on the book A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow written by the US scientists Joshua S Goldstein and Staffan A Qvist.

On September 15,2008, Oliver Stone was named the artistic director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.

Oliver Stone was interviewed in the 2021 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Once Upon a Time in Queens about the 1986 New York Mets.

Many of Oliver Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases.

Oliver Stone wants to punch you in the face with this stuff and when you leave the theater, he wants you to leave with a big idea.

Oliver Stone has listed Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol as early film-making heroes, as well as fellow combat veteran turned director Samuel Fuller.

Oliver Stone has been married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis Oliver Stone, a United Nations protocol attache, on May 22,1971.

Oliver Stone then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7,1981.

Oliver Stone was given the Dharma name Minh Duc after receiving the five precepts from a Buddhist monk.

In 2003, Oliver Stone was a signatory of the third Humanist Manifesto.

In 1999, Oliver Stone was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and possession of drugs, including fenfluramine, phentermine, meprobamate and a small amount of hashish.

Oliver Stone pled guilty to two counts of driving while intoxicated and was ordered into a rehabilitation program.

Oliver Stone was arrested again on the night of May 27,2005, in Los Angeles for possession of marijuana.

Oliver Stone was released the next day on a $15,000 bond.

Oliver Stone drew criticism for his comments on Harvey Weinstein himself, saying:.

Oliver Stone has drawn attention for his opinions on controversial world leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin.

Oliver Stone served as a delegate for Jerry Brown's campaign in the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries and spoke at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Oliver Stone endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In September 2016, Oliver Stone said he was voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president.

Oliver Stone added that, as a progressive leftist, he felt forced to vote third party, as he believed neoconservatives like Hillary Clinton had taken over the Democratic Party.

Oliver Stone additionally cited Trump's stances on climate change and immigration.

On November 22,2021, Stone penned an op-ed on The Hollywood Reporter, criticizing both Donald Trump and Joe Biden for not declassifying all records on the assassination of John F Kennedy.

In July 2023, during an interview with Russell Brand, Oliver Stone stated that he regretted voting for Biden, because he feared that Biden could start World War III over the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Also in 2023, Stone donated to personal friend Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Oliver Stone's words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence.

Two days later, Oliver Stone issued a second apology to the ADL, which was accepted.

Oliver Stone is a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Oliver Stone signed a petition in support of Assange's bid for political asylum in June 2012.

Oliver Stone called Saudi Arabia a major destabilizer in the Middle East.

In March 2002, Oliver Stone was filming a documentary in the West Bank when Operation Defensive Shield was launched.

Oliver Stone has had an interest in Latin America since the 1980s, when he directed Salvador, and later returned to make his documentary South of the Border about the left-leaning movements that had been taking hold in the region.

Oliver Stone has expressed the view that these movements are a positive step toward political and economic autonomy for the region.

Oliver Stone supported Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and admired the Colombian militant group FARC.

Oliver Stone skipped the 68th Academy Awards ceremony, where his film Nixon received three nominations, to visit the Zapatistas of southern Mexico.

Oliver Stone has criticized the US-supported Operation Condor, a state terror operation that carried out assassinations and disappearances in support of South America's right-wing dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Oliver Stone used the trip to covertly smuggle Western goods into the USSR on behalf of a French human rights organization.

In December 2014, Oliver Stone made statements supporting the Russian government's narrative on Ukraine, portraying the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity as a CIA plot.

Oliver Stone rejects the claim that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was responsible for the killing of protesters as claimed by the succeeding Ukrainian government.

Oliver Stone said Yanukovych was the legitimate president who was forced to leave Ukraine by "well-armed, neo-Nazi radicals".

Oliver Stone said that in "the tragic aftermath of this coup, the West has maintained the dominant narrative of 'Russia in Crimea' whereas the true narrative is 'USA in Ukraine'".

Oliver Stone accused the CIA, FBI, and NSA of cooking the intelligence.