Life and Career
Forster was born in Au (today Illertissen), in the Neu-Ulm district of Bavaria. The son of a German doctor and a Swiss architect, Forster grew up in Davos, a winter resort in eastern Switzerland.
In 1990, when he was 20 years old, Forster moved to New York, in the United States. For the next three years, he attended New York University's film school, making several documentary films. In 1995, he moved to Hollywood and shot an experimental low budget film ($10,000) called Loungers, which won the Slamdance Audience Award. Forster's first feature-length motion picture was the psychological drama Everything Put Together (2000), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
His breakthrough film was Monster's Ball (2001), in which he directed Halle Berry in her Academy Award-winning performance as the wife of a man on death row. His next film, Finding Neverland (2004), was based on the life of author J.M. Barrie. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Forster received BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, and Golden Globe nominations for his direction.
Forster's next film, the thriller Stay (2005) starred Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and grossed $8 million (USD) in the United States. Stranger than Fiction (2006), a surreal romantic comedy starring Will Ferrell, was a critical success and earned $54 million worldwide.
Forster then directed an adaptation of best-seller Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, scripted by repeat collaborator David Benioff and starring British newcomer Khalid Abdalla. The film follows an Afghani-American man who returns to his war-ravaged country to save the son of his former best friend. The Kite Runner was released on December 14, 2007 and grossed $73 million worldwide.
Forster directed the twenty-second James Bond film, Quantum of Solace which began shooting on January 2, 2008, shortly before his 39th birthday, making him the youngest director in the series' history (beating the previous record set by Guy Hamilton, who was 41 when he directed Goldfinger five years before Forster's birth). Quantum of Solace was released in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2008. This was the second highest grossing Bond film (behind Casino Royale), pulling in over $586 million worldwide.
Forster is currently directing the film adaptation of the novel World War Z starring Brad Pitt, which Paramount announced at the July 2010 San Diego Comic-Con.
He is a frequent collaborator with Kansas City based motion graphics firm MK12, who designed the opening credit sequences and other surreal onscreen graphics for The Kite Runner, Stranger Than Fiction and Quantum of Solace.
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