This article is about the film director. For the saxophonist, see Tim Burton (musician).
[>>]Source: WikipediaThis article is about the film director. For the saxophonist, see Tim Burton (musician).
Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Dark Shadows and for blockbusters such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland, which was the second highest-grossing film of 2010, and the tenth highest-grossing film of all time.
Burton is known for using recurring collaborators on his works; among them are Johnny Depp, who has become a close friend of Burton since their first film together; musician Danny Elfman, who has composed for all but five of the films Burton has directed or produced; and domestic partner Helena Bonham Carter. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997, and a compilation of his drawings, entitled The Art of Tim Burton, was released in 2009. Burton has directed 16 films and produced 12, as of 2012. His latest films are an adaptation of the soap opera Dark Shadows, released on May 10, 2012, and a remake of his 1984 short, Frankenweenie, scheduled to be released on October 5, 2012.
Early life
Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California, to Jean Burton (née Erickson), the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and Bill Burton, a former minor league baseball player who would later work for the Burbank Park and Recreation Department. As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard on Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques or shoot them on 8 mm film without sound. (One of his oldest known juvenile films is The Island of Doctor Agor, that he made when he was 13 years old.) Burton studied at Burbank High School, but he was not a particularly good student. He was a very introspective person, and found his pleasure in painting, drawing and watching films. His future work would be heavily influenced by what he read, such as works by Edgar Allan Poe and the horror and science fiction films he watched, such as Godzilla, and films made by Hammer Film Productions, the works of Ray Harryhausen and Vincent Price.
After graduating from Burbank High School with Jeff Riekenberg, Burton attended the California Institute of the Arts to study character animation. Some of his classmates were John Lasseter, Brad Bird, John Musker and Henry Selick. (In the future, Selick and Burton would work together in The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.)
As a student in CalArts, Burton made the shorts Stalk of the Celery Monster and King and Octopus. They remain only in fragments today.
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