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Tom Hooper

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 received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.[4]

Not to be confused with Tom Hopper.

Tom Hooper

Thomas George Hooper

(1972-10-05) 5 October 1972
London, England
  • British
  • Australian

  • Director
  • producer
  • screenwriter

1992–present

Hooper began making short films as a teenager and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University, he directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of Quayside, Byker Grove, EastEnders, and Cold Feet on British television. In the 2000s, Hooper directed the major BBC costume dramas Love in a Cold Climate (2001) and Daniel Deronda (2002), as well as the 2003 revival of ITV's Prime Suspect series. He gained acclaim for directing the HBO projects Elizabeth I (2005), Longford (2006), and John Adams (2008), the former of which earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie.


Hooper made his feature film debut with the British drama Red Dust (2004) followed by the sports drama The Damned United (2009). He directed the historical drama The King's Speech (2010) which earned him the Academy Award for Best Director. He followed up with the musical epic Les Misérables (2012), and the romantic drama The Danish Girl (2015), the later of which was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. He directed the 2019 live-action adaptation of the musical Cats, for which he won three Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Director, Worst Picture, and Worst Screenplay. That same year he directed two episodes of the HBO fantasy series His Dark Materials (2019).

Early life and education[edit]

Tom Hooper was born on 5 October 1972 in London, England, the son of Meredith Jean (Rooney) and Richard Hooper.[1][5] Meredith is an Australian author and academic and Richard is an English media businessman. Hooper was educated at Highgate School and Westminster School.[6] His initial interest in drama was triggered by his English and drama teacher at Highgate, former Royal Shakespeare Company actor Roger Mortimer, who produced an annual school play.[7]


At the age of 12, Hooper read a book entitled How 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 as On Camera by Harris Watts.[7] Aged 13, he made his first film, entitled Runaway Dog, using a clockwork 16mm Bolex 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 in Oxfordshire.[9]


When Hooper was 14, his film Bomber Jacket came runner-up in a BBC 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 in World War II.[2] Another of Hooper's short films, entitled Countryside, depicts a nuclear holocaust.[n 2][8]


Hooper finished school aged 16, then wrote the script for his first professional short film, entitled Painted 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. Director Paul 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 to Channel 4 and broadcast on the channel's First Frame strand in 1992, had a screening at the 35th London Film Festival and had a limited theatrical release.[6][7]


After taking a gap year to finance Painted Faces, Hooper read English at University College, Oxford.[6][11] He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, where he directed Kate Beckinsale in A View from the Bridge and Emily Mortimer in The 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 for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 featuring Right 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 with Tom Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley, and Mark Strong, which aired during Super Bowl XLV. His commercial work is produced through international production company SMUGGLER.[18]

Career[edit]

1997–2003: BBC and ITV productions[edit]

After graduating from Oxford, Hooper directed further television commercials, intending to break into the film industry the same way Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Hugh Hudson did.[6][19] He was introduced by his father to the television producer Matthew Robinson, who mentored Hooper and gave him his first television directing work.[6][7] For Robinson, Hooper directed episodes of the short-lived Tyne Tees Television soap opera Quayside in 1997, four episodes of the Children's BBC television series Byker Grove in the same year, and his first episodes of the BBC One soap opera EastEnders in 1998.[6][20]


Hooper directed several EastEnders episodes between 1998 and 2000, two of which were hour-long specials that represented the soap when it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Soap Opera in 2000 and 2001;[6] the first was the episode in which Carol Jackson (Lindsey Coulson) learns her daughter Bianca (Patsy Palmer) had an affair with her fiancé Dan 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 on EastEnders, and learned to direct with speed.[12] He was influenced in his early career by the cinematic style of American TV series such as ER, NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street and tried to work that style into his EastEnders episodes; one scene featuring Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) involved a crane shot, which Hooper believes made him infamous among the EastEnders production crew.[22]


In 1999, Hooper directed two episodes of Granada Television's comedy-drama television series Cold 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 on Nancy Mitford's novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Hooper, the writer Deborah Moggach, and the producer Kate Harwood researched the period details of the production by interviewing Nancy's sister Deborah.[24] In 2002, Hooper directed Daniel Deronda, adapted from George Eliot's novel. The Guardian's Mark 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 of Prime Suspect, entitled The Last Witness. The two-part serial was the first Prime Suspect instalment to be made since 1995, when star Helen Mirren quit. Hooper initially declined to direct the production because he believed the series was tired. Granada's head of drama Andy 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 the ITV network in November 2003. Hooper's direction received praise from Andrew Billen in the New 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 on PBS in the United States. Hooper received nominations for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for his work on Prime Suspect.[27][28]

List of directorial debuts

List of EastEnders crew members

List of English Academy Award nominees and winners

List of University of Oxford people

at IMDb

Tom Hooper

(video)

Hooper's Academy Award for Best Director acceptance speech