Stanley Kubrick

(American, 1928–1999)

Stanley Kubrick was an acclaimed American director known for groundbreaking films such as Lolita (1962), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and The Shining (1980). “If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly,” he once explained. “It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.” Born on July 26, 1928 in Bronx, NY, despite his intelligence—he famously had an IQ of 200 and was a gifted chess player—Kubrick was a poor student in high school. At the age of 16, he sold a photograph to the popular Look magazine, and began working for them the following year. During the late 1940s, the artist voraciously read film theory and watched the movies of Elia Kazan and Sergei Eisenstein. Kubrick directed 13 feature films over this career, including the 18th-century period piece Barry Lyndon (1975), for which he constructed a special camera to film candlelight. Despite being nominated for 13 Academy Awards over the course of his career, he was only awarded one. Kubrick died on March 7, 1999 on his estate Childwickbury Manor, United Kingdom.