Best Known As: Director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle is a British filmmaker who won an Oscar for directing the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Boyle, of Irish Catholic stock, grew up outside of Manchester, England and began his career in British television and theater early in the 1980s. His first feature films, the very black comedies Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996), brought him critical acclaim and financial success (and made Ewan McGregor a star). Boyle caught the attention of Hollywood, but his next two features fared poorly -- A Life Less Ordinary (1997, with McGregor again) and The Beach (2000, starring Leonardo DiCaprio). He then made two British TV movies and collaborated with writer Alex Garland (author of the novel The Beach) on the hit horror movie 28 Days Later (starring Cillian Murphy and precursor to 28 Weeks Later). Boyle is known as a versatile and inventive director with a dark streak; his other films include the charmer Millions (2004), the cerebral sci-fi drama Sunshine (2007, with Michelle Yeoh) and the Mumbai love story Slumdog Millionaire (2008, with Freida Pinto).
Career Highlights: Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise
First Major Screen Credit: Elephant (1989)
Biography
One of Britain's most celebrated breakthrough talents of the '90s, director and producer Danny Boyle made his name with his acclaimed 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. An angry, scabrously funny film about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts that took a non-judgmental approach to drug use, the film won equal parts praise and controversy, as well as lasting fame for its director.
Born in Manchester, England, on October 20, 1956, Boyle grew up going to the cinema. Somewhat ironically -- given that he didn't set foot in a theatre until he was 18 -- he started his career in the theatre, as it seemed to him the most accessible way of getting into the arts. He first worked with the Joint Stock Theatre Company and then with the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, where he was the Artistic Director from 1982 until 1985. In 1985, he became the Deputy Director of the Royal Court Theatre, where he stayed until 1987.
During the '80s, Boyle also began directing for television, making TV films and serials. He made his feature directorial debut with Shallow Grave in 1994. A stylish, darkly humorous psychological thriller set in a posh flat in Edinburgh's New Town, it was the first collaboration between director Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, and screenwriter John Hodge. It received strong reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and was a commercial success in Britain. Two years later, Boyle, Macdonald, and Hodge (along with Ewan McGregor, who had starred in Shallow Grave) re-teamed to make Trainspotting. The huge success of the film -- it became the U.K.'s second most popular film in history to date, after Four Weddings and a Funeral -- propelled its makers and star McGregor into the international spotlight, and it became one of the most provocative and talked-about films of the decade.
Boyle followed up Trainspotting in 1997 with another Hodge-Macdonald-McGregor collaboration, A Life Less Ordinary. A romantic comedy featuring karaoke and a pair of ferocious angels (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo), it starred McGregor and Cameron Diaz as mismatched lovers at odds with the law and each other. Despite the anticipation surrounding the film, it met with heavily mixed reviews and virtually dissipated at the box office. That same year, Boyle served as executive producer for Twin Town, a surprisingly popular Welsh film that featured much of the rough-edged humor of Boyle's previous work.
After passing up the opportunity to direct the fourth Alien movie, Boyle opted to make The Beach (2000), an adaptation of Alex Garland's acclaimed novel of the same name. A story of paradise gone wrong, it was shot in Thailand and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as a young American who encounters the darker side of human nature while backpacking through Asia. Though it was anticipated to be quite a big film for Boyle, The Beach ultimately suffered from not only a severe critical backlash but also incurred the wrath of Garland fans by altering the bleak ending of the novel for a more safe mainstream coda. If A Life Less Ordinary had disappointed fans, The Beach made them out and out angry, and for his next two films, Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise and Strumpet (both 2001), Boyle would go back to the basics. Even if neither of those films ultimately received wide release (they were shot for U.K. television), they did offer Boyle the chance to return to his low-budget roots and experiment with digital video -- which was the format he would eventually turn to for his next wide-release effort, 28 Days Later.
Perhaps his most successful and widely embraced film since Trainspotting, 28 Days Later offered a harrowing vision of a post-apocalyptic London ravaged by the terrifying effects of a "rage virus." A sort of updating of the George A. Romero zombie mainstays, Boyle's film differed in that unlike the creatures in Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, the creatures in this film did not stagger mindlessly but attacked their victims with violent vengeance. A critical and financial success both in the U.K. and the U.S., 28 Days Later scored a direct hit at the box office, thanks to its energetic thrills and healthy word of mouth. On a curious historical note, the film became something of a rarity when, months after its initial stateside release in June of 2003, it was rereleased into theaters with an alternate ending attached to the last reel.
After a brief return to short films with the sci-fi themed comedy Alien Love Triangle, Boyle returned to feature-film territory with a Millions, a comedy drama concerning two boys who -- despite having the good fortune of stumbling across a healthy sum of money stolen from a nearby bank -- must quickly spend the money before the U.K. switches to the Euro. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
"It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one."[2]
When he was 14 years old, Boyle applied to transfer from his local school to a seminary near Wigan, but was dissuaded from doing so by a priest. During an interview with The Times for his film Millions, he said:
“I was meant to be a priest until I was 14, I was going to transfer to a seminary near Wigan. But this priest, Father Conway, took me aside and said, ‘I don’t think you should go’. Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don’t know. But quite soon after, I started doing drama. And there’s a real connection, I think. All these directors — Martin Scorsese, John Woo, M. Night Shyamalan — they were all meant to be priests. There’s something very theatrical about it. It’s basically the same job — poncing around, telling people what to think.”[3][4]
In 1980 Boyle started working in television as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland where he produced, amongst other TV films, Alan Clarke's controversial Elephant before becoming a director on shows such as Arise And Go Now, Not Even God Is Wise Enough, For The Greater Good, Scout and two[8] episodes of Inspector Morse. He was also responsible for the BBC2 series Mr. Wroe's Virgins.[7]
The first movie Boyle directed was Shallow Grave.[7] The film was the most commercially successful British film of 1995[9] and led to the production of Trainspotting, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh.[10] Working with writer John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald, Shallow Grave earned Boyle the Best Newcomer Award from the 1996 London Film Critics Circle.[9]Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were two films that revitalised British cinema.[7]
He then moved to Hollywood and sought a production deal with a major US studio. He declined an offer to direct the fourth film of the Alien franchise, instead making A Life Less Ordinary using British finance.[citation needed]
Boyle's next project was an adaptation of the cult novel The Beach. Filmed in Thailand with Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role, casting of the film led to a feud with Ewan McGregor, star of his first three films.[7] He then collaborated with author Alex Garland on the post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later.[11]
He also directed a short film Alien Love Triangle (starring Kenneth Branagh), and was intended to be one of three shorts within a feature film. However the project was cancelled after the two other shorts were made into feature films: Mimic starring Mira Sorvino and Impostor starring Gary Sinise.[12]
In 2008 he directed Slumdog Millionaire, the story of an impoverished child (Dev Patel) on the streets of Mumbai who competes on India's variant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, for which Boyle won an Academy Award. The film won eight Academy Awards in total.[13]"To be a film-maker...you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different."[7] Andrew Macdonald, producer of Trainspotting, said "Boyle takes a subject that you've often seen portrayed realistically, in a politically correct way, whether it's junkies or slum orphans, and he has managed to make it realistic but also incredibly uplifting and joyful."[7]
Boyle is to direct Ponte Tower, about a girl moving into South Africa's famed fifty-four story skyscraper near the end of the apartheid-era only to fall under the influence of a drug lord, as well as the film Solomon Grundy, about a baby who experiences an entire lifetime in just 6 days.[citation needed] "Once you've had anything like a hit in the movie business it's so easy to get lost. All these people are scuttling around trying to get you to make things, suggesting things and offering deals. The pressure of what to do next is horrible."[citation needed]
