56 Facts About Peter Jackson

Sir Peter Robert Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 and is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer.

Peter Jackson is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by JR R Tolkien.

Peter Jackson is the fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.

Peter Jackson shared a nomination for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his partner Fran Walsh for Heavenly Creatures, which brought him to mainstream prominence in the film industry.

Peter Jackson has been awarded three Academy Awards for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, including the award for Best Director.

Peter Jackson was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002.

Peter Jackson was later knighted by Sir Anand Satyanand, the Governor-General of New Zealand, at a ceremony in Wellington in April 2010.

In December 2014, Peter Jackson was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Peter Jackson has long cited King Kong as his favourite film, and around the age of nine he attempted to remake it using his own stop-motion models.

Peter Jackson's classmates remember him wearing a duffel coat with "an obsession verging on religious".

Peter Jackson had no formal training in film-making, but learned about editing, special effects and make-up largely through his own trial and error.

Peter Jackson recalls attempting to remake King Kong when he was nine.

At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International, while being interviewed alongside Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron, Peter Jackson said certain films gave him a "kick".

Peter Jackson had two acting roles including a famous scene in which he fights himself on top of a cliff.

In February 1997, Peter Jackson launched legal proceedings against the New Zealand Listener magazine for defamation, over a review of The Frighteners which claimed that the film was "built from the rubble of other people's movies".

Around this time Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong was shelved by Universal Studios, partly because of Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla, both giant monster movies, that had already gone into production.

Peter Jackson has claimed the Commission considered firing him from Feebles, though the NZFC went on to help fund his next three films.

Peter Jackson won the rights to film Tolkien's epic in 1997 after meeting with producer Saul Zaentz.

Originally working with Miramax Films towards a two-film production, Peter Jackson was later pressured to render the story as a single film, and finally overcame a tight deadline by making a last-minute deal with New Line, who were keen on a trilogy.

Peter Jackson collaborated with game designer Michel Ancel from Ubisoft to make a video game adaptation of the film, which released 21 November 2005 and was a critical and commercial success.

In 2007, Peter Jackson directed a short film entitled Crossing the Line, to test a new model of digital cinema camera, the Red One.

Peter Jackson completed an adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestseller, The Lovely Bones, which was released in the United States on 11 December 2009.

Peter Jackson has said the film was a welcome relief from his larger-scale epics.

Peter Jackson was one of three producers on The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 2011.

Peter Jackson is officially credited as producer but before he began working on The Hobbit, helped Spielberg direct the film.

In December 2012, Peter Jackson said that the Tintin schedule was to shoot performance-capture in 2013, aiming for a release in 2015.

On 30 July 2012, Peter Jackson announced on his Facebook page that the two planned Hobbit movies would be expanded into a trilogy.

Peter Jackson wrote that the third film would not act as a bridge between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films, but would continue to expand The Hobbit story by using material found in the Lord of the Rings Appendices.

In late December 2009, Peter Jackson announced his interest in a film adaptation of the novel Mortal Engines.

In October 2016, Peter Jackson stated that the film would be his next project, as producer and co-writer, alongside Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

On 30 January 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' rooftop concert, which was the band's final performance, Peter Jackson announced that his next directorial work would be a documentary about the making of their final album Let It Be.

Peter Jackson was set to make games with Microsoft Game Studios, a partnership announced on 27 September 2006, at X06.

In 2006, Peter Jackson gave NZ$500,000 to embryonic stem cell research.

Peter Jackson contributes his expertise to 48HOURS, a New Zealand film-making competition, through annually selecting 3 "Wildcards" for the National Final.

Peter Jackson donated his services and provided replica aircraft to create a 10-minute multimedia display called Over the Front for the Australian War Memorial in 2008.

Peter Jackson contributed to the defense fund for the West Memphis Three.

In 2012 Peter Jackson supported the American Red Cross "Zombie Blood Drive" together with other famous artists such as The Black Keys band members and the cast of the show The Walking Dead.

Peter Jackson owns an aircraft restoration and manufacturing company, The Vintage Aviator, which is dedicated to World War I and World War II fighter planes among other planes from the 1920s and 1930s.

Peter Jackson is chairman of the Omaka Aviation Heritage Trust, which hosts a biennial air show.

Peter Jackson owns a scale modeling company Wingnut Wings that specializes in World War I subjects.

Peter Jackson was a noted perfectionist on the Lord of the Rings shoot, where he demanded numerous takes of scenes, requesting additional takes by repeatedly saying, "one more for luck".

Peter Jackson has been known to spend days shooting a single scene.

Peter Jackson was an early user of computer enhancement technology and provided digital special effects to a number of Hollywood films.

Peter Jackson is one of the lead actors in two of his films: in Bad Taste, he plays two characters named Derek and Robert, even engaging them both in a fight.

Peter Jackson has made cameos in several films not directed by him.

Peter Jackson appears as himself in the 2013 Doctor Who 50th anniversary spoof The Five Doctors Reboot, alongside Sir Ian McKellen.

Peter Jackson appears as himself in the 2019 episode "Dogfight Derby" of Savage Builds.

Peter Jackson won three Academy Awards in 2003, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Song, all for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Peter Jackson is an avid aviation enthusiast and owns a collection of over 40 airworthy World War I-era warbirds housed at Hood Aerodrome near Masterton, and a Gulfstream G650 in Wellington.

Peter Jackson is interested in building scale models and owns a company that makes models of World War I aircraft.

Peter Jackson received some criticism during the 2019 Wellington City Council Elections, with his support for then-city councilor Andy Foster.

Since 1994's Heavenly Creatures Peter Jackson's films have enjoyed success in the annual awards season, earning many nominations and winning several awards; The Frighteners being his only fictional directed effort since 1994 not to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Peter Jackson's films have fared extremely well in the technical categories as well as the major categories; all three Lord of the Rings pictures as well as King Kong won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in their respective years.

In total Peter Jackson's directed efforts have been the most awarded films at three separate Academy Award ceremonies, the 74th, 76th, and 78th.

In 2006, Peter Jackson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 2016, Peter Jackson was inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame.