Richard Linklater
Richard Stuart Linklater (/ˈlɪŋkleɪtər/; born July 30, 1960)[2] is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).
Linklater is known to have a distinct style and method of filmmaking. Many of his films are noted for their loosely structured narrative. The Before trilogy and Boyhood both feature the same actors filmed over an extended period of years. He has received several Academy Award nominations and won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for his work on Before Sunrise. He also won a Golden Globe Award for directing Boyhood, which is one of only nine movies to receive a perfect score on Metacritic. In 2015, Linklater was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.[3]
Early life[edit]
Linklater was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Diane Margaret (née Krieger), who taught at Sam Houston State University, and Charles W. Linklater, III.[4][5] He attended Huntsville High School in Huntsville, Texas, during grades 9–11, where he played football for Joe Clements as a backup quarterback for the #1 ranked team in the state. For his senior year, he moved to Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas because he was better at baseball than football and Bellaire had a better baseball coach. As a teen, Linklater won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.[6][7]
Linklater originally attended Sam Houston State University, where his mother was a professor, on a full-ride baseball scholarship.[8] Although he enjoyed Sam Houston State, Linklater admitted to feeling "directionless" at that time in life and, after being diagnosed with a career-ending heart condition as a sophomore, he dropped out of college to work on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.[9] He developed a passion for literature due to the amount of downtime on the oil rig, and spent many nights with a coworker who would screen old movies at night with a projector. Upon returning to land, Linklater wanted to continue watching old films and, after repeated visits at a repertory cinema in Houston where he would spend "up to twelve hours a day", he realized he wanted to become a filmmaker.[10] He used his savings to buy a Super-8 camera, a projector, and editing equipment, and moved to Austin, Texas.
Personal life[edit]
Linklater lives in Austin, Texas, and refuses to live or work in Hollywood for any extended period of time.
Linklater has been partnered with Christina Harrison since the 1990s.[31] In 1994 they had a daughter, and twin girls in 2004. The oldest, Lorelei Linklater, co-starred in Boyhood as the sister of the main character.
Linklater has been a vegetarian since his early 20s.[32] In 2015, he explained the dietary lifestyle in a Boyhood-style documentary for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.[33]