Anderson, Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas Anderson (January 1, 1970, Studio City, California, US)

With his 1997 film Boogie Nights, then-27-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson took his place on the list of Hollywood wunderkinds.

Boogie Nights was hailed by one critic as the first great film about the ‘70s to come out since the ’70s. Anderson was born in Studio City, California, on January 1, 1970.

After a brief stint as an English major at Emerson College and an even shorter stint at the New York University Film School, Anderson began his career as a production assistant on various TV movies, videos, and game shows in Los Angeles and New York.

“I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.”

In 1992, he made his short Cigarettes & Coffee, and after it was screened at the 1993 Sundance Festival, he made his first full-length feature, Sydney — retitled Hard Eight, which despite its ’A’ festival recognition went unnoticed by the audiences.

Later on Anderson did Boogie Nights, which received three Oscar and two Golden Globe nominations,and was widely hailed as one of the best films of the year, if not the decade.

His next film, Magnolia (1999) was an ensemble film of epic length, and featured performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, William H. Macy, Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore; centered around themes of love, death, abandonment, and familial estrangement. hough it turned up on a slew of 10-best lists and secured Oscar nods for Cruise, Aimee Mann’s original song “Save Me”, and Anderson’s screenplay, Magnolia’s three-hour-and-twenty-minute running time scared off audiences, and the film failed to break even Boogie Nights’ $25 million tally.

2012   The Master (2012)
1999   Magnolia (1999)
1997   Boogie Nights (1997)