Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as tool for for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.

Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.

In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight. This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre, and _Seafarers, The (1952)_ ), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire in California.

Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss and The Killing brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory. Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus, by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crewmembers were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.

Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick is rumored to be afraid of flying.

Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita, which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).

The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange, which rivaled Lolita for the controversy it generated - this time not for only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security have resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.

Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist, Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining. Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining.)

Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.

In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.

Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List, which covered much of the same material.

While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut, starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.

Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately begain active work on Artificial Intelligence: AI, but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.

After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discretely about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.

How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.


Died 66 days into the year 1999, also 666 days before 1 January 2001. He wanted to make a film based on Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum" which appeared in 1988. Unfortunately, Eco refused, as he was dissatisfied with the filming of his earlier novel Der Name der Rose (1986) and also because Kubrick wasn't willing to let him write the screenplay himself. Rarely gave interviews. He did, however, appear in a documentary made by his daughter Vivian Kubrick shot during the making of The Shining (1980). According to Vivian, he was planning on doing a few formal TV interviews once Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was released, but died before he could. Refused to talk about his movies on set as he was directing them and never watched them when they were completed. The controversy around A Clockwork Orange (1971)'s UK release was so strong that Kubrick was flooded with angry letters and protesters were showing up at his home, demanding that the film never be shown in England again. He personally petitioned the studio to pull it from theaters, despite his legal inability to control a film after production. The studio, out of respect for Kubrick, eventually decided to pull the film out of theaters prematurely. His dislike of his early film Fear and Desire (1953) is well known. He went out of his way to buy all the prints of it so no one else could see it. Several of his novel adaptations were often met with angry reactions from the authors, because they are usually unfaithful to the source material. Was voted the 23rd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. He was the least prolific director on this list, having made only 16 films over the course of a 48 year career. People would come to his door looking for him, and as few people knew what he looked like, he would tell them that "Stanley Kubrick wasn't home." Often read about psychology, and knew how to manipulate his cast quite well. A fine example of this is with Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980). He was so reclusive that the press would make up wild stories about him. One such story was that he shot a fan on his property, and then shot him again for bleeding on the grass. He was a big fan of American sitcoms "Seinfeld" (1990), "Roseanne" (1988) and "The Simpsons" (1989). He was also a fan of American football and would have his friends in America tape games and send them to him. In addition to being a sports fan, he was fascinated by the craft of television commercials. He was particularly impressed by how they could effectively tell a story in 30 seconds. According to his close friend Michael Herr, he watched The Godfather (1972) over ten times and said it was probably the greatest film ever made. Daniel Waters wrote the original 180 page screenplay for Heathers (1988) intending for Kubrick to direct it, as he believed Kubrick was the only director who could get away with making a three-hour high school film. Kubrick wasn't interested, and when the film was made the screenplay was cut nearly in half, resulting in a 102-minute film. According to a biography, Kubrick's wife finally convinced him once to take what she considered a long-overdue vacation. While vacationing, she noticed he was taking copious notes about something. When asked what he was writing, she discovered he was jotting some ideas down about a film project! Due to his poor grades in high school (67% average) he was not accepted to a university. Although he never enrolled, he would sit in during classes at Columbia University. According to biographer Michael Herr, Kubrick was often noted for wanting to stick to each word of dialogue without changing it or an actor adding lines of his own. The two exceptions were Peter Sellers (with whom he worked on Lolita (1962) and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)) and R. Lee Ermey (from Full Metal Jacket (1987)). Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 329-332. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Is portrayed by Stanley Tucci in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004) By the age of thirteen, he had become passionate about photography, chess and jazz drumming. Starting with Lolita (1962), he independently produced all his films from his adopted home of England, UK. Abigail Rosen, who co-starred with Viva in Andy Warhol's Tub Girls (1967), was the first door lady at Max's Kansas City, a nightclub in New York City. She claims she had the honor of throwing Kubrick out of the club. "At first Mickey [Ruskin] hired me as the coat-check girl, but it was on the second floor and we were schlepping coats from downstairs to upstairs, and taking them back down where the people wanted to leave. It was not a good plan, besides which people would go up and steal coats. So we abandoned the whole idea and I became the door lady with Bob Russell. The embarrassing times were when Mickey asked us to kick somebody out. The philosophy behind it was that no one would beat on or abuse a woman. I was asked one night to kick Stanley Kubrick out. He was drunk and obnoxious and neither Mickey or I knew who he was. I said, 'Sir, I think it's time for you to leave now, you're not going to be happy here.' And he left. Then Mickey found out the next day who we had kicked out, and he yelled at me for not recognizing him. 'That's why I have you here,' he said, 'you're supposed to know who these people are.'". In his 1974 memoir "Bud: The Brando I Knew," 'Carlo Fiore' (I)-- writing of his experience developing and working on the movie One-Eyed Jacks (1961) with his friend Marlon Brando - said that Kubrick had wanted to hire Spencer Tracy to play the character of Dad Longworth in the film. The part had already been cast with Karl Malden, and Brando countered that Malden was a fine actor. Kubrick agreed, but said that Malden played "losers" and the part needed a heavyweight to balance Brando's character of Rio. Brando immediately vetoed the idea of Tracy and forbade any more discussion on the topic. "I want you to be big -- Lon Chaney big," Kubrick instructed Vincent D'Onofrio during the filming of Full Metal Jacket (1987). Kubrick had started pre-production on Full Metal Jacket (1987) in 1980, a full seven years before it was theatrically released. The success of similar films during that time (particularly Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987)) left him a bit jaded, feeling like he had been beaten at his own game. This sentiment stayed with him in the early 1990s when he decided to shelf "The Aryan Papers", his adaptation of the Louis Begley novel "Wartime Lies". At the time Steven Spielberg was shooting the soon-to-become classic Schindler's List (1993), and Kubrick thought the Holocaust-based subject matter of the two projects was too similar. The shelving of this project explains the 12-year span between "Full Metal Jacket" and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He once called Ken Russell in the early 1970s but ended the conversation abruptly because, according to Russell, he had been frightened by a bee. He then called several days later to ask Russell where he had found the lovely English locations for his period films. Russell told him and Kubrick used the locations in his next film, Barry Lyndon (1975). Russell said, "I felt quite chuffed.". He had no intention of having Anthony Burgess' write the screenplay for A Clockwork Orange (1971), intending to do it himself. In fact, there is little that Kubrick added to Burgess' work except for editorial decisions such as eliminating the second murder Alex commits in prison and replacing Billy Boy with Georgie as police constable Dim's partner (the entire last chapter of the novel was jettisoned, but it had been in the American edition of the novel that Kubrick had first read. Americans, as Burgess reasoned, did not like to see their criminals reformed). The dialog was considered by many critics and cineastes as being lifted almost straight from the book (though there are enough differences to dismiss that as a valid criticism of Kubrick the screenwriter). This is the first of the two movies in which Kubrick has sole credit as screenwriter (Barry Lyndon (1975), which immediately followed A Clockwork Orange (1971) is the other). Kubrick was one of the first director-writers to actually take credit on a film. Going back to the beginnings of the film industry, directors had often participated in the writing of their films, but most did not take credit. It might have been the fact that Kubrick used less of Vladimir Nabokov's credited screenplay and more of his own writing (and the improvisations of Peter Sellers) for Lolita (1962) that influenced him to become a credited screenwriter. Lolita (1962) was shot at the time that the "auteur" theory (which held the director was the main author of a film) was gaining prominence, and from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) onward Kubrick took credit as a screenwriter. Earlier, he had worked uncredited on the screenplays of Paths of Glory (1957) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which he had originally been hired by Marlon Brando to direct. As he was one of the greatest masters the cinema has ever had and truly was the author of his films, Kubrick likely was encouraged to go it alone on A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975) (which allegedly he shot in an improvisatory manner after reading sections of the novel, which he carried with him during shooting). Out of all of his feature films, Spartacus (1960) is the only one to which he hasn't contributed in writing the screenplay. According to Kirk Douglas, Kubrick allegedly wanted to take credit for the Spartacus (1960) screenplay that was primarily written by Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo, who was blacklisted at the time, originally was going to use the alias Sam Jackson. During the production of the film, Otto Preminger announced he had hired Trumbo to write the screenplay for Exodus (1960). Douglas, in turn, announced that he had been the first to hire Trumbo, who would be credited on his film. Preminger's film was released six months earlier than "Spartacus," which was released in October 1960. Douglas later said he decided to give Trumbo credit because he was appalled at Kubrick's attempt to hog the credit. This "recollection" likely was colored by the fact that Kubrick went on to become a great director, and the film was seen as a Kubrick film rather than as the product of Kirk Douglas, who produced it. Douglas viewed the film as a fulfillment of his personal vision. It is highly unlikely that Kubrick would try to take the credit, as Trumbo served as one of the members of the film's executive committee - screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, executive producer Kirk Douglas and producer Edward Lewis," according to Duncan L. Cooper's 1996 article "Who Killed 'Spartacus'?" Trumbo was a friend of Edward Muhl, the boss of Universal Pictures. which was financing the film. According to Cooper, Howard Fast, a former Communist Party member who wrote the novel the film is based on, worked on the screenplay but received no credit. Walter Winchell had already revealed that Trumbo was working on the film, and it was widely known that Trumbo had won an Oscar using the pseudonym Robert Rich on The Brave One (1956), and that his "front", Ian McLellan Hunter, had won an Oscar for the story of Roman Holiday (1953) that Trumbo had, in fact, written. In other words, the blacklist was a sham. There were rumors that the House Un-American Activities Committee was going to investigate the movie industry again, and right-wingers began attacking the film. Douglas gave into studio boss Muhl's idea that the class conflict at the heart of Spartacus (1960) be muted, thus betraying both Trumbo's screenplay and Fast's novel. A major battle scene showing the triumph of Spartacus' slave army over the Romans was deleted lest it seem too provocative, and medium and closeup shots of Laurence Olivier that showed his character - Roman dictator Crassus - experiencing fear over the slave rebellion were replaced with wide shots. Scenes where the slave army was crushed, of course, remain, though their length was cut back to minimize the carnage of the original 197-minute cut. Part of what remains - Olivier's Crassus looking for Spartacus' body among the living and the dead slaves - is shot indifferently on a sound stage and seems mismatched with the rest of the scene. Trumbo himself realized the necessity of muting his own passions in order to make the screenplay moderate so the film would be a success at the box office. He told an interviewer, "If the film had failed, neither I nor any other blacklisted writer would ever have been able to work again." The actions of Preminger and Douglas to give Trumbo credit effectively ended the blacklist, though many blacklisted screenwriters continued to write under pseudonyms until the early 1970s. Has directed two actors in Oscar-nominated roles: Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)) and Peter Ustinov (Spartacus (1960)). Ustinov won his Oscar. Grew up in the Bronx. According to his daughter, Vivian Kubrick, the family name is pronounced like "Que-brick," rather than like "koo-brick". In 1969, after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Kubrick turned to one of his life-long obsessions into a motion picture screenplay - Napoleon. The script would have required an extremely large budget to be made into a film, and it was all on its way well into pre-production, when the studio suddenly decided to pull the plug after another big-budget biopic on the life of Napoleon, "Waterloo", failed financially. Kubrick, angry and depressed that his film was canceled, would later in his career (and even in the production of other films) attempt to get the project back on its feet with different companies over the years. The requirements needed would have been to write a completely new screenplay, and Kubrick, feeling he couldn't match the masterpiece that was his original draft, dropped the project. In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (edited by Steven Jay Schneider), 9 of Kubrick's films are listed. He is the director with the greatest percentage of films listed, since Kubrick made only 13 feature films. His listed films are Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). Claims that his IQ is below average.