Tom Hooper | |
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 Hooper at the 2010Toronto Film Festival | |
| Born | Thomas George Hooper (1972-10-05)5 October 1972 (age 53) London, England |
| Citizenship |
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| Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1992–present |
| Parents | |
| Awards | Full list |
Thomas George Hooper (born 5 October 1972)[1] is a British-Australian[n 1] filmmaker. Known for his work in film and television he has receivednumerous accolades including anAcademy Award, aBAFTA Award, andPrimetime Emmy Award as well as a nomination forGolden Globe Award.[4]
Hooper began making short films as a teenager and had his first professional short,Painted Faces, broadcast onChannel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University, he directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes ofQuayside,Byker Grove,EastEnders, andCold Feet on British television. In the 2000s, Hooper directed the majorBBC costume dramasLove in a Cold Climate (2001) andDaniel Deronda (2002), as well as the 2003 revival ofITV'sPrime Suspect series. He gained acclaim for directing theHBO projectsElizabeth I (2005),Longford (2006), andJohn Adams (2008), the former of which earned him thePrimetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie.
Hooper made his feature film debut with the British dramaRed Dust (2004) followed by thesports dramaThe Damned United (2009). He directed the historical dramaThe King's Speech (2010) which earned him theAcademy Award for Best Director. He followed up with the musical epicLes Misérables (2012), and the romantic dramaThe Danish Girl (2015), the latter of which was nominated for theBAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film. He directed the2019 live-action adaptation of the musicalCats, for which he won threeGolden Raspberry Awards for Worst Director, Worst Picture, and Worst Screenplay. That same year he directed two episodes of theHBO fantasy seriesHis Dark Materials (2019).
Tom Hooper was born on 5 October 1972 in London, England, the son ofMeredith Jean (Rooney) andRichard Hooper.[1][5] Meredith was an Australian author and academic and Richard is an English media businessman. Hooper was educated atHighgate School andWestminster School.[6] His initial interest in drama was triggered by his English and drama teacher at Highgate, formerRoyal Shakespeare Company actor Roger Mortimer, who produced an annual school play.[7]
At the age of 12, Hooper read a book entitledHow to Make Film and Television and decided he wanted to become a director.[6][7] For the next year Hooper researched filmmaking from publications such asOn Camera by Harris Watts.[7] Aged 13, he made his first film, entitledRunaway Dog, using a clockwork 16mmBolex camera his uncle had given to him.[6] Hooper said: "The clockwork would run out after thirty seconds, so the maximum shot length was thirty seconds. I could only afford a hundred feet of Kodachrome reversal film, which cost about twenty-five [pounds], and you had to send off for two weeks to be processed. I could only make silent movies, because sound was too expensive and complicated."[8] He slowed down the frame rate of the camera so he could maximise what little film stock he had.[7] Hooper classified the short, about a dog which kept running away from its owner, as a comedy, and filmed it on location inOxfordshire.[9]
When Hooper was 14, his filmBomber Jacket came runner-up in aBBC younger filmmakers' competition.[8] The short starred Hooper's brother as a boy who discovers a bomber jacket and a photograph hidden in a cupboard and learns his grandfather died inWorld War II.[2] Another of Hooper's short films, entitledCountryside, depicts anuclear holocaust.[n 2][8]
Hooper finished school aged 16, then wrote the script for his first professional short film, entitledPainted Faces. He spent the next two years raising capital for the short by courting advertisement directors, whose financial dominance during the late 1980s was noticed by Hooper. DirectorPaul Weiland invested in the short, which provided Hooper with the equipment he needed. After two years of financing and production,Painted Faces was completed. Hooper wrote, produced, directed and edited it.[7] It was sold toChannel 4 and broadcast on the channel'sFirst Frame strand in 1992, had a screening at the 35thLondon Film Festival and had a limited theatrical release.[6][7]
After taking agap year to financePainted Faces, Hooper read English atUniversity College, Oxford.[6][11] He joined theOxford University Dramatic Society, where he directedKate Beckinsale inA View from the Bridge andEmily Mortimer inThe Trial. Hooper also had his first paid directing work, earning £200 for a corporate Christmas video, and he directed his first television advertisements, including one forSonic the Hedgehog 3 featuringRight Said Fred.[7][12] He continues to direct advertisements alongside television and film projects. In 1996 he joined the commercial production company John S. Clarke Productions and in 2001 he signed with Infinity Productions.[13][14][n 3] Hooper has also directed commercials including an ad for Jaguar withTom Hiddleston,Ben Kingsley, andMark Strong, which aired duringSuper Bowl XLV. His commercial work is produced through international production company SMUGGLER.[18]
After graduating from Oxford, Hooper directed further television commercials, intending to break into the film industry the same wayRidley Scott,Tony Scott andHugh Hudson did.[6][19] He was introduced by his father to the television producerMatthew Robinson, who mentored Hooper and gave him his first television directing work.[6][7] For Robinson, Hooper directed episodes of the short-livedTyne Tees Television soap operaQuayside in 1997, four episodes of theChildren's BBC television seriesByker Grove in the same year, and his first episodes of theBBC One soap operaEastEnders in 1998.[6][20]
Hooper directed severalEastEnders episodes between 1998 and 2000, two of which were hour-long specials that represented the soap when it won theBritish Academy Television Award for Best Soap Opera in 2000 and 2001;[6] the first was the episode in whichCarol Jackson (Lindsey Coulson) learns her daughterBianca (Patsy Palmer) had an affair with her fiancéDan Sullivan (Craig Fairbrass). The Jackson episode marked the beginning of a week of episodes that led to Palmer's departure from the soap, and Robinson had hired Hooper to direct the key episodes of that storyline.[21] Hooper worked 10-hour days onEastEnders, and learned to direct with speed.[12] He was influenced in his early career by the cinematic style of American TV series such asER,NYPD Blue andHomicide: Life on the Street and tried to work that style into hisEastEnders episodes; one scene featuringGrant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) involved acrane shot, which Hooper believes made him infamous among theEastEnders production crew.[22]
In 1999, Hooper directed two episodes ofGranada Television's comedy-drama television seriesCold Feet, which marked his move to bigger-budget productions.[23] There was initially concern at Granada that Hooper might be an unsuitable director for the series given his background in drama.[6]
In 2001, Hooper directed his first of two costume dramas for the BBC;Love in a Cold Climate was based onNancy Mitford's novelsThe Pursuit of Love andLove in a Cold Climate. Hooper, the writerDeborah Moggach, and the producerKate Harwood researched the period details of the production by interviewing Nancy's sisterDeborah.[24] In 2002, Hooper directedDaniel Deronda, adapted fromGeorge Eliot's novel.The Guardian'sMark Lawson said of Hooper's two costume dramas, "he brought verve and intelligence to television's most conservative form".[25]
Hooper returned to Granada the next year to direct the revival ofPrime Suspect, entitledThe Last Witness. The two-part serial was the firstPrime Suspect instalment to be made since 1995, when starHelen Mirren quit. Hooper initially declined to direct the production because he believed the series was tired. Granada's head of dramaAndy Harries introduced Hooper to Mirren, who persuaded him to take the job by promising that he could make the serial his own way.[6][23] The two-part serial was broadcast on theITV network in November 2003. Hooper's direction received praise from Andrew Billen in theNew Statesman: "Tom Hooper proved an outstanding director, imposing a bleak, overlit hyper-realism on the search for a killer in a hospital, isolating Mirren in rows of empty chairs and playing on the eyewitness/optical visual metaphors."[26] The serial was also broadcast onPBS in the United States. Hooper received nominations for theBritish Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial and thePrimetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for his work onPrime Suspect.[27][28]
Hooper made his debut as a feature film director with the South AfricanTruth and Reconciliation Commission dramaRed Dust (2004), which starsHilary Swank,Chiwetel Ejiofor andJamie Bartlett. The film was not widely seen, which Hooper attributed to media coverage of torture during theIraq War: "When I started making it you could watch the movie with a wonderful sense of 'we'd never do it in our own country…they're the horrible people but it's not us.' By the time the film came out (there were) these revelations that the Americans were torturing, the British were torturing. The film became a lot more uncomfortable for the very audiences it was designed to target. I have learned that sadly the theatrical audience does not run to see films that are openly issue-led."[23] The premiere of the film in the United Kingdom came onBBC Two in 2005, making it eligible for the BAFTA Television Awards; it was nominated in the Best Single Drama category at the 2006 ceremony.[29]
In 2005, Hooper was asked by Helen Mirren to direct the Company Pictures/HBO Films two-part serialElizabeth I, in which she was starring.[30] The serial won Hooper his first Emmy Award, for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special.[6] In January 2006, Hooper commenced filming the Granada/HBO television filmLongford. The film dramatises the failed efforts ofLord Longford (played byJim Broadbent) to secure the release from prison ofMoors murderer Myra Hindley (played bySamantha Morton). The film was broadcast onChannel 4 in October 2006. Seb Morton-Clark for theFinancial Times calledLongford one of the most accomplished television dramas of 2006, and praised the writer and director: "Morgan and director Tom Hooper wove a seamless narrative about obsession – and not just that of the misguided philanthropist for the incarcerated Hindley or even that that existed between the sadistic lovers themselves. More significantly, by using chunks of original television footage, they painted a stark picture of the zealotry of a vengeful nation and its press over the supposed embodiment of evil."[31] Hooper's continued successes led him to be ranked at number four in the Directors category ofBroadcast magazine's annual Hot 100.[32] The following year he was nominated for the British Academy Television Craft Award for Best Director forLongford.[33]
Elizabeth I andLongford led directly to Hooper being selected byTom Hanks to direct the epic miniseriesJohn Adams forPlaytone and HBO. Hooper had been working on a biographical film withJoan Didion aboutKatharine Graham, publisher ofThe Washington Post, since 2006 when he was asked by Hanks to helm the programme.[34][n 4] The miniseries, starringPaul Giamatti asJohn Adams, was based onDavid McCullough's Adamsbiography and was Hooper's first wholly American production.[36] He worked on the miniseries for a total of 16 months; principal photography lasted 110 days on locations in the United States, France, England and Hungary and he controlled a $100 million budget.[37]The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert complimented Hooper's style of direction in the first two episodes "Join or Die" and "Independence":
Director Tom Hooper lets his actors shine, as he did so marvelously in Helen Mirren'sElizabeth I and the child-killer dramaLongford, but he complements them, too, with this kind of immediate point of view. And when he does give us panoramic shots from afar – of the Adams farm in Braintree, for example – they're askew, to keep us out of the classroom mode. At the end of episode 2 [...] Hooper showcases all his directorial strength with one bold choice. When the long-fretting Congress finally decides to break with Britain, he refrains from using any visual or aural tweaks. Upon the announcement, "The resolution carries," the scene remains perfectly silent for one long moment. The terror of responsibility hangs heavily in the room, while a victorious soundtrack surely would have chased it away.[38]
John Adams received 23 Emmy Award nominations, including another Outstanding Direction nomination for Hooper, and won 13, the highest number for any nominee in a single year.[39] He was also nominated for theDirectors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.[40] At the beginning of 2009, he was profiled forThe Observer's film Hotlist.[41]
The wake ofJohn Adams' Emmy wins brought offers to Hooper from studios to direct spy and comic book films, which he declined.[42] In November 2007, he signed on to directThe Damned United, reuniting him with Peter Morgan and Andy Harries. The film was an adaptation ofDavid Peace's novelThe Damned Utd, a fictional version of the 44 turbulent days English football managerBrian Clough spent as manager ofLeeds United. It was originally developed byStephen Frears forMichael Sheen to play Clough. Frears quit the project after he was unable to translate the book to film.[43] Hooper received a copy of the script while shootingJohn Adams in Hungary and noticed a similarity between the "egotistical, flawed, brilliant" Adams and the "egotistical, flawed, brilliant" Clough.[44] He was not put off by joining the project later, as Morgan's script was in only its first draft.[23] During pre-production, Hooper engaged in meticulous research, particularly on the locations and the football grounds of the era. He castTimothy Spall as Clough's assistantPeter Taylor,Colm Meaney asDon Revie and Jim Broadbent asDerby County chairmanSam Longson.[45] During editing, it was decided to make the tone of the film lighter to attract audiences and to appease the real people depicted in the film.The Damned United was released in 2009.[44][46]
Work on Hooper's next film,The King's Speech, began in the same year. Hooper explained: "It was a stage play, and my mother who's Australian was invited to a fringe [theatre] reading in London because she's part of the Australian community. The play's about the relationship between King George the Sixth and his Australian speech therapist. She came back and said 'you've got to read this play,' and I read it and it was brilliant ...".[23] Hooper castColin Firth asGeorge VI andGeoffrey Rush asLionel Logue and spent three weeks with the actors reading the script and rehearsing.[47] Principal photography took place on location around the UK from November 2009 to January 2010.[48] During editing, Hooper continued to consult with Firth and Rush by sending them cuts of the film and listening to their feedback.[47]
Hooper completed the final cut of the film at the end of August 2010 and presented it a few days later at theTelluride Film Festival.[49] The film won the People's Choice Award at theToronto International Film Festival and Hooper won theDirectors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.[50][51] In February 2011, he was presented with theAcademy Award for Best Director, though lost theBAFTA Award for Best Direction toDavid Fincher.[52][53] In comparing the two films,Variety's Adam Dawtrey wrote, "Hooper's 2009 filmThe Damned United did not register among awards selectors, butKing's Speech is a much more personal project. His Anglo-Australian parentage reflects the culture clash at the heart of the movie, and it pays off with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing drama."[54]
Following the success ofThe King's Speech during the awards season, Hooper joined the 15-person board of governors at theBritish Film Institute, was invited to join the directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was ranked at number 19 inThe Times' British Film Power 100.[55][56][57] In March 2009, Hooper met withNelson Mandela in preparation for directing a film adaptation of Mandela's autobiographyLong Walk to Freedom.[44][58] By 2012, however, he had left the project.[59][60]
He was offered the chance to directIron Man 3 forMarvel Studios but declined and instead signed on to directLes Misérables forWorking Title Films, which he had first heard about while discussing a different project with screenwriterWilliam Nicholson in 2010. Hooper had not seen the musical, so watched a performance of it in London's West End.[61][62] Adapted from themusical, the film starredHugh Jackman,Russell Crowe,Anne Hathaway,Amanda Seyfried,Helena Bonham Carter,Sacha Baron Cohen, andEddie Redmayne. As the film required the actors to sing and dance, they were auditioned in front of Hooper, producers and composers.[62] The role ofFantine was hugely contested; Hooper said, "It was like half a dozen of the biggest female movie stars on the planet wanted to play the role".[63]
Hooper investigated filming the feature in3D, and performed some camera tests before deciding to film it with traditional 2D methods. He stated "[...] I slightly worry with 3D that some people will physically struggle with it. If you have a certain type of eyesight, it can be more demanding than watching a normal movie."[64] Unlike other musical films,Les Misérables features the actors singing live on camera, rather than miming to backing vocals. Hooper toldLos Angeles Times that he thought there was a "slightly strange falseness" when he saw musical films where the actors sang to recordings. The actors wore wireless earpieces on set so they could sing to accompanying piano music. Hooper believed this method allowed the actors to have emotional control over their songs: "When Annie [Hathaway, who plays Fantine] is singing 'I Dreamed a Dream', if she needs to take a tenth of a second to have a thought before she sings it, or to have an emotion before she sings a line, she can take it."[65]Les Miserables was released in North America on 25 December 2012, and received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.[66]
Hooper's fifth feature film,The Danish Girl, was released in late 2015. It loosely tells the story ofLili Elbe, one of the first people to undergosex reassignment surgery, and wifeGerda Wegener. It starsEddie Redmayne andAlicia Vikander, both of whom received Academy Award nominations, with the latter winning. Critics were generally positive about the film.[67]
In May 2016, it was announced that he would direct an adaptation ofAndrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical,Cats, which is in turn, based onT. S. Eliot'sOld Possum's Book of Practical Cats.[68] Filming commenced in November 2018 and the film, which starsJennifer Hudson,Ian McKellen,Judi Dench,James Corden,Idris Elba andTaylor Swift, was released on 20 December 2019[69][70] but was a critical andcommercial failure. Hooper co-produced the original song "Beautiful Ghosts" with Lloyd Webber andGreg Wells, written by Swift and Lloyd Webber.[71]
In 2023, he co-supervised a new digital remix and remaster ofLes Misérables inDolby Vision andDolby Atmos, in collaboration with producerCameron Mackintosh, music producer Lee McCutcheon, music director Stephen Metcalfe and sound mixerAndy Nelson. This version of the film was released theatrically inDolby Cinema on 14 February 2024 in the United Kingdom and 23 February 2024 in North America to celebrate the stage musical's upcoming 40th anniversary in 2025.[72]
In February 2024, Hooper revealed that some upcoming projects with him set to direct are in the works, following a five-year hiatus from the medium caused by the critical and financial failure ofCats and spending time directing commercials for clients such asVodafone,McDonald's, Santander and Vanish, saying, "I'm certainly quite close on a couple of things ... I've been busy. I'm very happy to get back behind the camera."[73]
Hooper uses camera styles "that encode the DNA of the storytelling in some way" and will reuse and develop filming styles in successive productions.[74] Hooper identifies research as being key to his process of directing period dramas such asJohn Adams to make the scenes authentic.[3] ForThe Damned United, Hooper and director of photographyBen Smithard researched the look of the late 1960s and early 1970s through football photography books.[75] Hooper has also been influenced by cinematographerLarry Smith, who worked withStanley Kubrick and advised Hooper of techniques used by Kubrick.[76] Hooper and Smith have worked together onCold Feet,Love in a Cold Climate,Prime Suspect,Red Dust andElizabeth I.
Hooper also uses uncommon framing techniques to emphasise story; inJohn Adams, he wanted to imply American independence seemed unlikely during the Revolutionary War, so he used "a very rough camera style—almost all hand held, wide lenses close to the actors, lots of movement, many cameras shooting at once so there was often not a settled master "point of view", and lots of unmatchingDutch tilts so the horizon lines of the frame were often being thrown off."[74] The America-set scenes were contrasted by the scenes set in France, in which more traditional filming techniques were employed to evoke a feel of entrenched values.[74] Similarly, inThe Damned United, Hooper began to experiment with using wide-angle lenses and putting actors in the extreme edges of the frame. He was influenced by the unusual framing from social photography of the 1970s, and he and Ben Smithard decided to adopt the framing style while scouting locations.[75] Hooper used the same style inThe King's Speech, particularly in the scene where Bertie and Logue meet in Logue's consulting room; Colin Firth is framed to the extreme left of the picture, leaving most of the shot dominated by the rough wall behind Firth.[74][77]
Another frequently used technique is Hooper's tendency to use a variety of focal length camera lenses to distort the resulting picture.[78] InThe Damned United he used a 10mm lens, notably in the scene where Clough stays inside during the Derby–Leeds match. Hooper operated the camera in this scene himself.[75] InThe King's Speech, Hooper used "typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm" lenses and put the camera close to the actors' faces.[78] Hooper said the use of this method in the first consulting room scene served to "suggest the awkwardness and tension of Logue and Bertie's first meeting".[74]
Following the release ofCats, reports came from the film's visual effects departments of Hooper's "hurtful", "horrible", "disrespectful" and "demeaning attitude" towards them and their work.[79] The VFX team reportedly were forced to work upwards of 90-hour working weeks, with some employees staying at the offices for two to three days at a time just to finish the film. One member of the VFX team said Hooper's treatment "was pure, almost slavery for us",[80] with six months to complete the trailer, and only four months to complete the film. Hooper supposedly had little understanding of the process of visual effects, thus the VFX department could not show Hooper the step-by-step process of what he wanted, such as animatics, unless it was already rendered. He reportedly would send emails to individual VFX artists on the film to denigrate their work. Hooper would also insult them during conference meetings, calling the work "garbage".[81] Neither Hooper nor Universal have commented on the accusations.[citation needed]
| Year | Title | Director | Producer | Writer | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Red Dust | Yes | No | No | BBC Films |
| 2009 | The Damned United | Yes | No | No | Sony Pictures Classics |
| 2010 | The King's Speech | Yes | No | No | The Weinstein Company |
| 2012 | Les Misérables | Yes | No | No | Universal Pictures |
| 2015 | The Danish Girl | Yes | Yes | No | Focus Features |
| 2019 | Cats | Yes | Yes | Yes | Universal Pictures |
| 2026 | Photograph 51 | Yes | No | No | FilmNation Entertainment |
| Year | Title | Network | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Quayside | ITV Tyne Tees | |
| Byker Grove | BBC One | 4 episodes | |
| 1998–2000 | EastEnders | 6 episodes | |
| 1999 | Cold Feet | ITV | 2 episodes |
| 2001 | Love in a Cold Climate | BBC1 | Miniseries |
| 2002 | Daniel Deronda | Miniseries | |
| 2003 | Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness | ITV | Miniseries |
| 2005 | Elizabeth I | HBO | Miniseries |
| 2006 | Longford | Television film | |
| 2008 | John Adams | Miniseries | |
| 2019 | His Dark Materials | BBC Studios/HBO | 2 episodes; Also executive producer |
| Year | Title | Academy Awards | BAFTA Awards | Golden Globe Awards | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins | ||
| 2010 | The King's Speech | 12 | 4 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 1 |
| 2012 | Les Misérables | 8 | 3 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 2015 | The Danish Girl | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3 | ||
| 2019 | Cats | 1 | |||||
| Total | 24 | 8 | 28 | 11 | 15 | 4 | |
Directed Academy Award performances
Under Hooper's direction, these actors have received Academy Award wins and nominations for their performances in their respective roles.
| Year | Performer | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Award for Best Actor | |||
| 2010 | Colin Firth | The King's Speech | Won |
| 2012 | Hugh Jackman | Les Misérables | Nominated |
| 2015 | Eddie Redmayne | The Danish Girl | Nominated |
| Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor | |||
| 2010 | Geoffrey Rush | The King's Speech | Nominated |
| Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress | |||
| 2010 | Helena Bonham Carter | The King's Speech | Nominated |
| 2012 | Anne Hathaway | Les Misérables | Won |
| 2015 | Alicia Vikander | The Danish Girl | Won |
