John Singleton is the youngest African-American director to be nominated for an Oscar

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Growing up in a troubled area of Los Angeles, film director, producer and screenwriter John Singleton deliberately focuses on the crime and disorder that reigns in the so-called slums in his projects. His creative career developed quite rapidly. The first works - "Poetic Justice", "Guys from the Street" and "Baby" - were rather cool and skeptically received by world film critics. But after the release of the blockbusters 2 Fast 2 Furious and Blood for Blood, no one doubted the talent that John Singleton was generously endowed with.

From clip makers to directors

John Singleton, whose biography shows the beginning of the director's career, was born in the middle of the winter of 1968. His parents were not representatives of creative bohemians - father Danny Singleton was a mortgage broker, a successful real estate agent, mother Sheila Ward-Johnson was the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company. Young John effortlessly and quite successfully completed not only high school, but also Pasadena City College, enrolling in high school.cinematic art.

Further, the future director continued his education at the University of Southern California, where he became a student of the course of Margaret Mehring, who specialized in training professionals in the field of screenwriting and directing. Her course gave the world film industry a lot of young talents. John Singleton, whose films are known to action fans all over the world, studied with Helen Childress, Stephen Chbosky and Carlos Brooks. While honing his skills in screenwriting, Singleton still preferred directing. Video clips were his debut in the world show business. A promising clip maker at a fairly young age managed to shoot a video for Michael Jackson Remember The Time with the direct participation of Eddie Murphy.

In the big movie

In 1991, the first full-length youth social drama "Guys from the Street" was released. This film grossed 9 times more than the cost of its production. It began with a dry statistical summary, stating the bare facts and stating that one in 21 African Americans would soon be killed, and ended with a call to keep the peace. As a talented and moving depiction of the mores of black American neighborhoods, the picture did more than convincingly demonstrate the near impasse of everyone who was born and raised there. The movie tells about what John Singleton felt for himself. The age (all films released by a more mature director did not repeat the success of the debut) of the director at the time of the release of the tape was 24 years old. So Singleton becamethe youngest African-American director to receive Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay and was highly acclaimed by the Academy Awards.

Crime-adventurous action comedy

The producers of the successful action-tape "Fast and the Furious" decided in 2003 to arrange a dashing race for the second time, hoping to hit a decent jackpot at the box office, so "Double Fast and the Furious" appeared. John Singleton gladly took over the director's chair. Oddly enough, but the independent director, without lapping, immediately fit into the Hollywood scheme of multi-budget cinema. The director explained his agreement to work on the sequel to The Fast and the Furious with the feeling of deja vu that John had more than once while watching the first part.

Crime bloody thriller

In 2005, John Singleton presents the crime thriller "Blood for Blood" to the audience. Here the director did without excessive Hollywood pathos and disastrous dramatizations. The focus of the story is on the relationship between the main characters. The professionally and qualitatively staged action-component and the gloomy soundtrack, John perfectly fit into the outline of the crime drama, not allowing the viewer to get bored. He maintains this pace in the action movie The Chase (2011).

The role of the main character is played by Taylor Lautner - the star of the "Twilight" saga, who has a hard time. The director focuses not on suspense, but on action, every now and thenplunging the hero Lonter into an inexorable cycle of fights, chases and gunfights. In 2014, the director tried to return to the genre of social drama by filming the film "Thulia". The plot tells the story of a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, who does not give up trying to defend the constitutional rights of a group of black guys who were falsely accused of selling drugs.

Biography

The Oscar nominee's latest project is a biopic about the life and work of Tupac Shakur. John Singleton is going to not only shoot it, be a co-writer of the script, but also produce it. The choice of director was no accident. The fact is that in 1991 Singleton filmed Shakur in a movie with Janet Jackson. The romantic drama "Poetic Justice" became the starting point of friendly relations between Tupac and John. A biopic about the controversial rapper tells about his childhood, adolescence, rise to fame and death.

Private life

The director was married to a real princess - actress Akosua Busia. But, despite the appearance of the daughter Hadar, the marriage soon broke up. After that, Singleton had lengthy romances with Westria Barlow and Tyra Banks. As a result, John has five children. In 2007, the director became the culprit of a car accident. While driving, he hit a pedestrian who died in hospital from his injuries. The investigation showed that Singleton's blood did not contain alcohol or other psychotropic drugs, as a result of which all charges were dropped.