Pete Docter

Critical, public and commercial reception to films Docter has directed as of December 17, 2015.

Before joining Pixar, Docter had created three non-computer animations, Next Door, Palm Springs, and Winter. All three shorts were later preserved by the Academy Film Archive. He was a fan of the company's early short films, but he knew nothing about them otherwise. He commented in an October 2009 interview, "Looking back, I kind of go, what was I thinking?"

In 2004, he was asked by John Lasseter to direct the English translation of Howl's Moving Castle. Docter made his directorial debut with Monsters, Inc.—the first Pixar movie not directed by Lasseter—, which occurred right after the birth of his first child, Nick. Docter has said that the abrupt move from a complete, single-minded devotion to his career to parenting drove him "upside down" and formed the inspiration for the storyline. Docter then directed the 2009 film Up, released on May 29, 2009. He based the protagonist of Up partially on himself, based on his frequent feelings of social awkwardness and his desire to get away from crowds to contemplate. Following the success of Up, Docter and fellow Pixar veterans John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich as well as long-time collaborator and director Brad Bird were honored with the Golden Lion Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. Docter directed the 2015 film Inside Out to critical acclaim.

In May 2009, Docter remarked retrospectively to Christianity Today that he had lived "a blessed life" so far. The A.V. Club has called him "almost universally successful". He has been nominated for eight Oscars (winning two), three Annie Awards (winning two), four BAFTA Film Awards (winning two), a British Academy Children's Award (which he won), and a Hochi Film Award (which he won). Accepting his Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, he said, "Never did I dream that making a flip book out of my third-grade math book would lead to this." Docter served as Vice-President of Creativity at Pixar Animation Studios through June 2018, and following Lasseter's step-down from the role, is the studio's chief creative officer. Also in June 2018, TheWrap reported that Docter plans to complete the film he is currently working on.

Docter appeared at Comic-Con 2008 and the 2009 WonderCon.

He spent about a year at the University of Minnesota studying both philosophy and making art before transferring to the California Institute of the Arts, where he won a Student Academy Award for his production "Next Door" and graduated in 1990. Although Docter had planned to work for Walt Disney Animation Studios, his best offers came from Pixar and from the producers of The Simpsons. He did not think much of Pixar at that time, and later considered his choice to work there a strange and unusual one.

He started at Pixar in 1990 at the age of 21 after Joe Ranft recommended him for John Lasseter, and began work the day after his college graduation as the tenth employee at the company's animation group and its third animator. He first met owner Steve Jobs when Jobs came to lay off some older workers. Docter instantly felt at home in the tight-knit atmosphere of the company. He has said, "Growing up ... a lot of us felt we were the only person in the world who had this weird obsession with animation. Coming to Pixar you feel like, 'Oh! There are others!'"

Peter Hans Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer, voice actor and chief creative officer of Pixar. He is best known for directing the Pixar animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015) and the upcoming Soul (2020), and as a key figure and collaborator at Pixar. He has been nominated for eight Oscars (two wins thus far for Up and Inside Out – Best Animated Feature), seven Annie Awards (winning five), a BAFTA Children's Film Award (which he won) and a Hochi Film Award (which he won). He has described himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".