Stanley Kubrick's only Oscar was for visual effects, not directing
One of cinema's most revered directors never won an Academy Award for directing. Stanley Kubrick's single Oscar came for the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose scientific realism had no precedent. The Bronx teenager with a camera and a chessboard ended up running Hollywood-funded films from an English manor.
Kubrick was born in Manhattan on 26 July 1928 and raised in the Bronx, where his father, a homeopathic doctor, kept the family comfortably off. School bored him and he skipped often, though he read Greek myths and Grimm's fables avidly. At 12 his father taught him chess, a lifelong passion that surfaces in many of his films. A Graflex camera at 13 set off a love of photography; he haunted a neighbour's darkroom, and the street photographer Weegee became an influence, later hired to shoot stills on Dr. Strangelove.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s he took pictures for Look magazine. His first major Hollywood feature, The Killing, arrived in 1956, and two projects with Kirk Douglas followed: Paths of Glory, an anti-war drama, and the epic Spartacus in 1960. The next year he moved to England, where he made Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, both starring Peter Sellers. From 1978 Childwickbury Manor, his home with his wife Christiane, doubled as his production base, giving him near total control while studios paid the bills.
He oversaw everything from scripts and editing to colour grading, marketing and how films were shown. Actors were often baffled by his demands for dozens of takes of a single shot. A Clockwork Orange (1971) caused such a storm in Britain that he withdrew it from UK circulation himself. For The Shining (1980) he was among the first directors to use a Steadicam for smooth tracking shots, a tool that mattered again on Full Metal Jacket (1987).
Many of his films opened to divided reviews and were reassessed later, and most drew nominations for Oscars, BAFTAs or Golden Globes. 2001 is now counted among the greatest films ever made. Kubrick died at 70 on 7 March 1999, only days after screening his final picture, Eyes Wide Shut, for his family and its stars.
Source: Stanley Kubrick
