Career
Monster's Ball, the debut production of Lee Daniels Entertainment, was a critical and box office success. It was also the first time an African-American was the sole producer on an Academy Award-winning film (Halle Berry took home the Oscar for Best Actress; the film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay).
Daniels' 2004 production The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Mos Def, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It went on to garner three nominations at the 2005 Independent Spirit Awards, the CICAE Arthouse Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Jury Prize at the Deauville International Film Festival and a "Special Mention for Excellence in Filmmaking" award from the National Board of Review.
Daniels' first directorial effort, 2006's Shadowboxer, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. It starred Helen Mirren, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Ferlito, Mo'Nique, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Macy Gray. It was nominated for Best New Director at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Mariah Carey, Daniels' close friend, co-starred in his 2008 production Tennessee. Written by Russell Schaumberg and directed by Aaron Woodley (Rhinoceros Eyes), the film is about two brothers, played by Adam Rothenberg and Ethan Peck, who travel from New Mexico to Tennessee to search for their estranged father. Along the way they meet Krystal (Carey), an aspiring singer who flees her controlling husband (Lance Reddick) to join them on their journey.
His 2009 film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire told the story of an obese, illiterate, 16-year-old girl (Gabourey Sidibe) who lives in a Section 8 tenement in Harlem. She has been impregnated twice by her father, Carl, and suffers long-term physical, sexual and emotional abuse from her unemployed mother, Mary (Mo'Nique). Carey also appeared, in the role of a social worker. The film screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and went on to garner widespread acclaim. Daniels was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, and the film received a Best Picture nod.
Former president Bill Clinton persuaded Daniels to produce public service announcements to encourage young people of color to vote. The campaign was launched in March 2004 and featured actor/musician LL Cool J and Grammy winner Alicia Keys. In 2010 Grace Hightower De Niro, who appeared in Precious, presented Daniels with the Pratt Institute's Creative Spirit Award.
Daniels' directed The Paperboy (2012), based on the 1995 novel by American author Pete Dexter, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, John Cusack, and Nicole Kidman. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
He is currently directing The Butler, starring Forrest Whitaker, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Mariah Carey, Terrence Howard, Alan Rickman and Oprah Winfrey.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)