David Cronenberg

Director

David Cronenberg was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on March 15th, 1943 and is the Director. At the age of 81, David Cronenberg biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, TV shows, and networth are available.

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Other Names / Nick Names
David Paul Cronenberg
Date of Birth
March 15, 1943
Nationality
Canada
Place of Birth
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Age
81 years old
Zodiac Sign
Pisces
Networth
$15 Million
Profession
Actor, Film Actor, Film Director, Film Editor, Film Producer, Screenwriter, Television Actor
Social Media
David Cronenberg Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 81 years old, David Cronenberg has this physical status:

Height
175cm
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Grey
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Average
Measurements
Not Available
David Cronenberg Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Atheist
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
BA Literature, Toronto University
David Cronenberg Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Margaret Hindson, ​ ​(m. 1972; div. 1979)​, Carolyn Zeifman, ​ ​(m. 1979; died 2017)​
Children
3, including Brandon and Caitlin
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
Not Available
Siblings
Denise Cronenberg (sister), Aaron Woodley (nephew)
David Cronenberg Life

David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, and actor.

He is one of the leading creators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films focusing on visceral bodily transformation, infection, electronics, and the physical connection.

Although his career largely revolved around horror and science fiction films like Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), his career has since diversified outside of these genres. Critics and audiences alike have polarized Cronenberg's films; he has received critical acclaim and sparked controversy for his portrayals of gore and violence.

"The most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world," the Village Voice called him.

His films have received numerous accolades, including, for Crash, the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique accolade that is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury, who in this case gave the award "for innovation and audacity."

Early life

Esteher (née Sumberg), a singer), and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor, were born in Toronto, Ontario. He was born in a "middle-class Jewish family" family. His father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and his mother was born in Toronto; the majority of his Jewish grandparents were from Lithuania; They stocked their shelves with a large number of books, and Cronenberg's father attempted to introduce him to art films such as The Seventh Seal, but Cronenberg's father was more interested in western and pirate films, showing a special fondness for those starring Burt Lancaster.

Cronenberg, a voracious reader from an early age, started enjoying science fiction magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Astounding, where he first encountered authors who would be influential on his own work, including Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, but he wouldn't know his primary influence until much later. Cronenberg also read comic books, noting that Tarzan, Little Lulu, Uncle Scrooge, Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Superman, and the original Fawcett Comics version of Captain Marvel, later known as Shazam. Although Cronenberg, an adult, believes that superhero films are artistically limited, he has a soft spot for Captain Marvel/Shazam, commenting how the character has been neglected. Cronenberg also read horror comics from the European Commission, which he characterized as "scary and strange and nasty, but not the ones your mother did not want you to have."

Avant-garde, horror, science fiction, and thriller films like Un Chien Andalou, Vampyr, War of the Worlds, Freaks, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alphaville, Performance, and Duel were among Cronenberg's early films that later became influential on Cronenberg's career. However, Cronenberg has also cited less obvious films as influences, including comedies like The Bed Sitting Room and Disney cartoons such as Bambi and Dumbo. Cronenberg said he loved these two Disney animated films, as well as Universal's live-action Blue Lagoon, which inspired his fear of horror, as well as Universal's live-action Blue Lagoon. Cronenberg went on to claim that Bambi was the "first important film" he ever saw, quoting the time when Bambi's mother was especially strong. Cronenberg had intended to film Bambi as part of a museum exhibition of his influence, but Disney refused to allow him to film him. Cronenberg cited Don't Look Now in terms of horror films that scared him.

Cronenberg began writing as a child and continued doing so often, mainly in the science fiction genre. He attended High School at Harbord Collegiate Institute and the North Toronto Collegiate Institute. In 1963, a keen interest in science, particularly botany and lepidopterology, led him to the Honours Science program at the University of Toronto, but later in his first year, he switched to Honours English Language and Literature.

Cronenberg's fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966), by classmate David Secter, sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses, learning the art of filmmaking, and made two 16mm films (Transfer and From the Drain). He founded the Toronto Film Co-op with Iain Ewing and Ivan Reitman, influenced by the New York underground film scene. After taking a year off to travel in Europe, he returned to Canada in 1967 and graduated from University College of Toronto in the top of his class.

Personal life

Cronenberg lives in Toronto. In 1972, he married Margaret Hindson, his first wife, and their seven-year marriage ended in 1979, amid personal and professional differences. Cassandra Cronenberg, their one daughter. Carolyn Zeifman, his second wife, was married before his death in 2017. While Rabid was filming as a production assistant, the couple met on the set. They have two children, Caitlin and Brandon. He wrote in Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1992) that The Brood was inspired by events that occurred during his first marriage's unraveling, which caused both Cronenberg and his daughter Cassandra a great deal of anxiety. Nola Carveth, the brood's mother, is based on Cassandra's mother. Cronenberg found the shooting of the climactic scene, in which Nola was strangled by her husband, to be "very satisfying."

Cronenberg admitted to him that he was intrigued by Cronenberg's early work but that he was later "terrified" to meet him in person. "You're the guy who made Taxi Driver and you're afraid to meet me," Cronenberg said. Cronenberg was identified as an atheist in the same interview. "I've tried to imagine squeezing myself into the box of a particular faith, I find it claustrophobic and oppressive," Cronenberg explained. "I think atheism is a recognition of what is real." Cronenberg said in a separate interview that it all depends on the "time of day" as to whether or not he is afraid of death. "It won't bother me to think that my work would sink below the waves without trace," he said.

So what?

It doesn't bother me."

The director continued to explain in Cronenberg on Cronenberg that he was raised in a secular Jewish household, and although he and his family had no objections against any faith, no one was involved in discussing such topics. Cronenberg wrote in the same book that he went through a period in his teens in which he wondered about the existence of God, but that the God concept was developed to deal with the fear of death. In a 2007 interview, Cronenberg discussed the role atheism plays in his work. "I'm interested in hearing, 'Let us address the existential issue,'" he wrote. We are all going to die, which is the end of all consciousness. There is no afterlife. There is no God. What do we do now?' "That's the point where it gets interesting to me."

In Cronenberg's later films (e.g. A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Strategy (Japan) openly religious characters have become more popular. During an interview with A History of Violence, Cronenberg said he preferred to identify as a materialist rather than an atheist, but that for me to move away from any aspect of the human body is a philosophical betrayal. And there's a lot of art and faith whose entire aim is to move away from the human body. I believe that my role in art is not to do that."

Cronenberg discussed the role religion plays in his films in a separate 2013 interview, citing Eastern Promises as the principal example:

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David Cronenberg Career

Career

Cronenberg and Ivan Reitman collaborated on two short sketch films and two short art-house films (the black-and-white Stereo and the colour Crimes of the Future). Throughout the 1970s, the Canadian government provided grants for his films. During this period, Cronenberg concentrated on his signature "body horror" films such as Shivers and Rabid, the latter of which gave pornographic actress Marilyn Chambers work in a different genre, but Cronenberg's first choice for the role was a then-unknown Sissy Spacek. Rabid's debut at international distributors was a success, and his upcoming two horror films, The Brood and Scanners, received more attention. However, Cronenberg displayed dynamism at this time by establishing Fast Company between The Brood and Rabid, a venture that reflected his fascination with car racing and bike gangs.

William S. Burroughs and Vladimir Nabokov have both been cited as influences by Cronenberg. Cronenberg's 1991 "translation" of Naked Lunch (1959), his literary hero William S. Burroughs' most controversial book, is perhaps the best example of a film that straddles the line between his personal chaos and mental turmoil. Cronenberg acknowledged that a straightforward translation of the novel would "cost 400 million dollars and be barred in every nation in the world." Rather, he continued to blur the lines between what seemed to be true and what seemed to be hallucination triggered by the main character's heroin use in his earlier film, Videodrome. In this manner within the film, some of the book's "moments" (as well as incidents loosely based on Burroughs' life) are included. When writing the screenplay for Naked Lunch (1991), Cronenberg said he had a moment of synergy with Burroughs' writing style. He felt the connection between his screenwriting style and Burroughs' prose style that he jokingly remarked that if Burroughs' resignation, "I'll just write his next book."

Cronenberg has stated that his films should be seen "from the point of view of the disease," and that, in Shivers, for example, he associates with the characters after they are infected with the anarchic parasites. Disease and tragedy, in Cronenberg's work, are less likely to be solved than agents of personal change. "But because we're trying to impose our own model of belief on things we consider as being relatively stable," Cronenberg said of his characters' shifts. However, when I look at a person, I see this maelstrom of organic, chemical, and electron chaos; it's volatility and chaos, shimmering; and the ability to change and transform and transmute." People injured in car accidents in Crash (1996), on the other hand, prefer to see their ordeal as "a fertilizing rather than a destructive event." Cronenberg had voted against Paul Haggis' choice for Crash (2004), arguing that doing so was "very disrespectful" to the "important and seminal" J.G. A Ballard novel on which Cronenberg's film was based was based.

Cronenberg hasn't really worked in the world of big-budget, mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, apart from his two films (1983) and The Fly (1986), although he has had occasional near misses. He was considered by George Lucas as a potential director for Return of the Jedi (1983), but was turned down. Cronenberg worked on a version of Total Recall (1990), but later experienced "creative differences" with developers Dino De Laurentiis and Ronald Shusett; a new version of the film was eventually created by Paul Verhoeven. Cronenberg, a director of Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the short story on which the film was based, said that his dissatisfaction with what he imagined was to be and what it hurt him so much that for a time, he suffered from a migraine similar to a needle piercing his eye, for a brief period.

Cronenberg was appointed as the producer of a sequel to another Verhoeven film, Basic Instinct (1992), but the project was ultimately cancelled. His thriller A History of Violence (2005) is one of his most expensive and most available to date. He said that the decision to direct it was influenced by his decision to suspend some of his compensation on the low-budgeted Spider (2002), but that it was one of his most critically acclaimed films to date, as well as Eastern Promises (2005), a film about one man's struggle to regain power in the Russian Mafia.

Cronenberg has worked on all of his films since The Brood (1979), with the notable exception of Michael Kamen's score The Dead Zone (1983). Artist Robert Silverman, art director Carol Spier (also his sister) sound editor Bryan Day, film editor Richard Sanders, costume designer Denise Cronenberg, and, of course, cinematographer Mark Irwin from 1979 to 1988. Cronenberg produced The Fly, Howard Shore's first opera in 2008.

Cronenberg worked with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky on all of his films since Dead Ringers (1988). (See List of film director and cinematographer collaborations). Suschitzky was the director of photography for The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Cronenberg said Suschitzky's role in the film "was the only one of those movies that actually looked good," which was a motivating factor to work with him on Dead Ringers.

Despite Cronenberg's work with a number of Hollywood celebrities, he remains a steadfast Canadian filmmaker, with almost half of his films (including main studio vehicles The Dead Zone and The Fly) being shot in his home province, Ontario. M. Butterfly (1993), most of which was shot in China, Spider, and Eastern Promises (2007), were all shot in England, and A Dangerous Method (2011), which was filmed in Germany and Austria. In and around Montreal, Rabid and Shivers were fired. The bulk of his films have been funded by Telefilm Canada, and Cronenberg, a vocal promoter of government-funded film programs, has said: "Every country needs [a scheme of government grants] to have a national cinema in the face of Hollywood."

Cronenberg has appeared in other directors' films as an actor. The bulk of his appearances are cameo appearances, as in the films Into the Night (1985), Blood and Donuts (1995), To Die For (1995), and Alias' television series Alias (2004), but Alias (1990) and Last Night (1998). He hasn't appeared in any of his own films, but he did appear in Shivers as an adolescent car-pound attendant; and his hands can be seen in eXistenZ (1999); and he appeared as a stand-in for James Woods' character in a videodrome for shots in which Woods' character wore a helmet that covered his head.

Cronenberg produced two extra-cinematographic projects in 2008: the exhibition Chromosomes at the Rome Film Festival, and the opera The Fly at the LaOpera in Los Angeles and the Théâtre Châtelet in Paris. Cronenberg finished production on A Dangerous Method (2011), Christopher Hampton's adaptation of The Talking Cure starring Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, and frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen. Jeremy Thomas, an independent British producer, made the film.

Cosmopolis, his film in 2012, exhibited for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Cronenberg claimed in the Rue Morgue's October 2011 edition that he had written a companion piece to his 1986 version of The Fly, which he would like to direct if given the opportunity. It is not a traditional sequel, but rather a "parallel tale," he has said.

For a time it seemed as though, as producer Paul Webster of Eastern Promises told Screen International, a sequel was in the works that would reunite the main team of Cronenberg, Steven Knight, and Viggo Mortensen. The film was supposed to be produced by Webster's latest production company Shoebox Films in partnership with Focus Features and shot in early 2013. However, Cronenberg said in 2012 that the Eastern Promises sequel had failed due to a budget conflict with Focus Features.

July 8, 2013, in Toronto, Ontario, and Los Angeles, filming for Cronenberg's next film, a comedy drama called Maps to the Stars (2014) — with Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, and Robert Pattinson began. This was the first time Cronenberg filmed in the United States.

Cronenberg's short film The Nest was released on YouTube on June 26, 2014. The film was commissioned for "David Cronenberg – The Exhibition" at EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and was on display on YouTube for the duration of the exhibition, until September 14, 2014. Consumed, Cronenberg's first book, published in 2014, was also published in 2014.

Viggo Mortensen revealed that Cronenberg is considering retirement due to a lack of funding for his film projects in a May 2016 interview. Despite this, Mortensen said in February 2021 that Cronenberg had improved an older script and that he wanted to film it with Mortensen. He went further and said that it is a "strange film noir" and recalls Cronenberg's earlier body horror films. The title was announced to be Crimes of the Future in April 2021. It was shot in Greece in the summer of 2021 and at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

In the minute long short film The Death of David Cronenberg, shot by his daughter Caitlin and released digitally on September 19, 2021, Cronenberg appears as himself.

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