Jonathan Glazer Biography

British director Jonathan Glazer began his career in film after completing a BA Honors degree in Theater Design and Direction at Nottingham Trent University. His first paying jobs were directing stage productions and making corporate videos. He then landed a job editing, writing voice overs and choosing music for film trailers. Eventually, after making a short film called Mad, he found himself so much in demand for music videos and commercials that he was able to choose only the projects that appealed to him.

Many of his commercials have won awards, including the black-and-white "Surfer" ad for Guinness. On the British Channel 4 program, The 100 Greatest TV Ads, "Surfer" was voted the best advertisement ever by the public. It went on to win two Gold awards for the Most Outstanding Direction and the Most Outstanding TV Commercial over 60 seconds at the 2000 Design & Art Direction (D & AD) awards, becoming the first commercial to win two Gold award in the entire history of D & AD. In 2004, he was nominated by the Directors Guild of Great Britain for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercial for "Devil's Island" (Stella Artois).

Glazer made his feature directorial debut with Sexy Beast (2000), starring Ben Kingsley. The film won many awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination for Kingsley and a BAFTA award nomination for Glazer. Glazer also won a British Independent Film Award for Best Director (Kingsley won for Best Actor) and a Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best First Feature.

For his second feature, Glazer not only directed, but wrote the screenplay for the controversial film, Birth (2004), starring Nicole Kidman as a woman who believes her deceased husband has been reincarnated and is now a 10-year-old boy. Next, he directed Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin (2013).

When he directed and wrote the screenplay for the drama The Zone of Interest (2023) starring an all-German cast and based on the novel by Martin Amis about a Nazi family, Glazer suddenly found himself faced with a lot of positive attention. The film immediately garnered praise for its unique look at the Holocaust and won five awards at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, including the Grand Prize of the Festival, the Palme d'Or and the FIPRESCI Prize. That was just the beginning.

Since then, it has received five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director; nine BAFTA nominations; and three Golden Globe nominations.

Photo courtesy of Shuli Grosman-Gray/ 2023 CBC.

Filmography:

The Zone of Interest (2023)
Under the Skin (2013)
Birth (2004)
Sexy Beast (2001)