Early Life
Aronofsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1969, the son of public school teachers Charlotte and Abraham Aronofsky who are conservative Jews. He grew up in the borough's Manhattan Beach neighborhood, where "I was raised culturally Jewish, but there was very little spiritual attendance in temple. It was a cultural thing — celebrating the holidays, knowing where you came from, knowing your history, having respect for what your people have been through." He graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School. He has one sister, Patti, who attended a professional ballet school through high school. His parents would often take him to Broadway theater performances, which sparked his keen interest in show business.
During his youth, he trained as a field biologist with The School for Field Studies in Kenya in 1985 and Alaska in 1986. He attended school in Kenya to purse an interest in learning about ungulates. He later said, "he School for Field Studies changed the way I perceived the world". Aronofsky's interest in the outdoors led him to backpack his way through Europe and the Middle East. In 1987 he entered Harvard University, where he majored in social anthropology and studied filmmaking; he graduated in 1991.
He became seriously interested in film while attending Harvard after befriending Dan Schrecker, an aspiring animator. Aronofsky's senior thesis film, Supermarket Sweep, was a finalist in the 1991 Student Academy Awards. In 1992, Aronofsky received his MFA degree in directing from the AFI Conservatory, where his classmates included Scott Silver, Doug Ellin, and Mark Waters. He won the institute's Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal.
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