Stanley Kubrick was an influential American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He directed a number of high acclaimed and sometimes controversial films. Kubrick is noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, the variety of genres in his movies, and his shunning of publicity.
Kubrick was born in Manhattan and was a poor student. He was interested in photography at an early age and worked as a freelance photographer for Look magazine after graduating from high school. He got his start as a filmmaker by making several short documentaries before moving on to feature films with Fear and Desire in 1953. In 1956, he made his first critically successful film, The Killing, a film noir starring Sterling Hayden.
Kubrick made his first of several war films in 1957 with Paths of Glory before working as a director-for-hire on Spartacus (1960) as a favor to actor Kirk Douglas whom he had worked with on Paths of Glory. Kubrick first courted controversy with his adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s risqué novel Lolita in 1962, and went on to direct the critically acclaimed and highly influential Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove. He went on to make several landmark films in the science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey), historical drama (Barry Lyndon), horror (The Shining), and thriller (Eyes Wide Shut) genres before dying in 1999 of a heart attack in his sleep.
