Biography for
Danny Boyle More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

Trade Mark

Often uses Ewan McGregor

The opening shot is usually a shot from the middle of the movie.

Often uses electronic music in his films.

Scotland - Often uses places, characters, actors or references to and relating to Scotland

Kinetic camera.

Frequently collaborates with John Murphy for Soundtrack production

Trivia

Passed directing Alien: Resurrection (1997) to work on A Life Less Ordinary (1997).

Attended Thornliegh Salesian College in Bolton, Lancashire

His favorite film is Apocalypse Now (1979)

Is one of 7 directors to win the Golden Globe, Director's Guild, BAFTA, and Oscar for the same movie, winning for Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The other directors to achieve this are Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), Milos Forman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Richard Attenborough for Gandhi (1982), Oliver Stone for Platoon (1986), Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List (1993), and Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Personal Quotes

You don't realize it, but often people are frightened of the director.

I learned that what I'm better at is making stuff lower down the radar. Actually, ideally not on the radar at all.

I don't want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them. At this time of the year you think about awards and if you want to win one you think you should make serious films, but my instinct is to make vivacious films.

I want my films to be life-affirming, even a film like Trainspotting (1996), which is very dark in many ways. I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.

I think I'm better at making films on my home turf, really. You learn from experience and I've learnt that through The Beach (2000/I). I love big movies, like Gladiator (2000), but I'm better at smaller films.

That's what's wonderful about actors sometimes, is that's who we watch on the screen... Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. They make much better fodder for this kind of thing [interviews] than a director.

[His next project, Sunshine (2007)] We're doing this film Sunshine (2007). In fact, we're casting for it in a few minutes actually. It's about a mission to the sun. It's a sci-fi set in space. They're flying a bomb to the sun and the bomb is like the size of Kansas, this immense bomb that they built in space. They're flying it to reignite a section of the sun which is failing, but it's really about a mission that went earlier, seven years earlier, and failed. So it's sort of mystery of what happened. It's quite big at the end, you get to meet the sun. Quite spectacular hopefully.

When I was making Sunshine (2007), it suddenly struck me: No director has ever gone back into space, with the exception of franchise directors. If you look at the record, you'll find that's true. I now know why.

On Shallow Grave (1994): When you make a film for £1m, we were literally selling furniture to pay for film stock by the end. We were flogging off sofas because we'd finished using them and using the money to buy film stock. I think your first film is always your best film. Always. It may not be your most successful or your technically most accomplished, whatever. It is your best film in a way because you never, ever get close to that feeling of not knowing what you're doing again. And that feeling of not knowing what you're doing is an amazing place to be. If you can cope with it and not panic, it's amazing. It's guesswork, inventiveness and freshness that you never get again. To prove it, watch Blood Simple. (1984) again. The Coen brothers are geniuses, but they never made a film as good as Blood Simple. I don't care what you say. So in a funny way, your first film is always your best film, so there you go.

On The Beach (2000/I): Leo [DiCaprio] is an amazing movie star because he's very director-oriented. When he commits to a project he just goes, "We do whatever this guy wants," and that's it. It's amazing how he has supported Scorcese and re-birthed Scorcese, if you like. That is a great definition of a movie star. That's what he's like. When I look at it, I remember thinking how much I didn't like these people, and that's really tough when you're directing a film. I liked the actors, we had a great time, but I didn't like the characters.

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