Stanley Kubrick

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Self-portrait of Stanley Kubrick at age 21.

Stanley Kubrick (Born July 26, 1928 – Died March 7, 1999) was an American movie director and movie writer. He is one of the most influential filmmakers in history because he made films in a way that was later copied by many others. His films are mostly based on many different types of books or short stories. He is most known for how realistic his movies are, as well as how good the sets was that he built for the movies and how well he used music and lightness and darkness in the movies, so evoke emotions.

Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. He received average grades, but displayed a keen interest in literature, photography, and film from a young age, and taught himself all aspects of film production after high school, which was a lot harder back then and required various chemicals and special papers and lights. His first job was as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After that he began making short films with very little money, and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for United Artists in 1956. He is today probably most widely known for 2001: A Space Odyssey which he made in 1968. At the time there was no other movie about space that was even remotely as realistic.

Some people think that it was so realistic that it was possible that the moon landings never happened but that he managed to make the world believe that they did because he was so good - but there is a lot of other materials that could not have been made up that disproves this conspiracy theory.