Paul Thomas Anderson

Anderson was born in California, United States on June 26, 1970. Little is known about his parents, Bonnie Gough is his mother, and his father, Ernie, is a former actor and radio vocalist. Like other great directors such as Quentin Tarantino , Paul devoured video tapes as a child and thus forged the taste and style that characterizes him today. He never graduated from college, and there is a curious anecdote: he stopped attending New York University on the third day.

The first thing that is known in his brief but profound career as a director, screenwriter and producer is a short film ( The Dirk Diggler Story ) that he made in high school back in 1988 about a porn star, a prelude to one of his best films: Boogie Nights . With the decision made not to study, Anderson began as a production assistant on various projects, until in 1993 he presented his first work at the Sundance Festival: Cigarettes and Coffee . The good reviews received gave him some name, enough to raise the necessary money for his debut on the big screen with Hard Eight .. A thriller about gambling, love and murders that raised him up as a future promise. The film was his first collaboration with actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman , John C. Reilly or Philip Baker Hall , three of his fetish actors with whom he has worked on most of his projects, since Anderson is a man who has always trusted a group of actors with whom you feel comfortable on set.

Just one year after its release, Paul Thomas Anderson introduces the world to Boogie Nights , the film that launched him directly to stardom. In this sordid film, focused on the pornography business, we already began to see what this great filmmaker was really going to deliver: long sequence shots, many of them with handheld cameras, full of tension and with an atmosphere meticulously designed to awaken the emotions he wanted. Very well organized choral casts, very dignified performances and a script elaborated with a development at the level of the best directors. The film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, although it fell short.

In 1999 what is probably his best work came to the screens: Magnolia . His personal “tour de force” that intertwines nine parallel stories and that has his hallmark: sequences of great tension, overwhelming and of great merit for their careful framing. He also managed to get the best out of actors like Tom Cruise , who won the Golden Globe and was close to his first Oscar as an actor. Like two years before, Paul opted for the statuette for history, although again he was left at the gates.

In Intoxicated with love , Anderson changed register and turned to tragicomedy in a pleasant story starring Adam Sandler who was nominated for a Golden Globe. After five years inactive, in 2007 he began his American “trilogy” in which he covers a spanning from the early 20th century, through the post-war era to the hippie era of the 1970s: Wells of Ambition presents a man corrupted by money and the lust for power, magnificently portrayed by Oscar -winner Daniel Day-Lewis . With exquisite photography and powerful images, Anderson adapts Upton Sinclair’s novel, albeit somewhat excessively long; in 2012 Joaquin Phoenixhe was fully introduced to the character of Freddie Quell, a 1950s drifter who converts to Scientology in The Master . A complex and dark film that portrays this sect, although it is never named and praised for the sublime performances of the main duo ( Philip Seymour Hoffman , included); to close the circle, in 2014 he adapted Pure Vice , a novel by the extravagant novelist Thomas Pynchon . It is an abstract story about a detective, used to drugs, who is entrusted with a mission. The transition from paper to celluloid was rewarded with a nomination for Anderson, as it is a faithful reflection of the pages written by the strange writer.

Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t have a project in the works at the moment, but viewers are eagerly awaiting what’s next from a director who has been hailed as one of the greatest modern filmmakers and behind-the-camera prodigy. His cinema has its own stamp and there are few artists on the current scene who can be up to it. The icing on the cake for this barrage of good reviews will soon come in the form of an Oscar, and while we will enjoy that he is only forty-five years old and has a lot of cinema in his veins.