Terrence Malick

One of the most praised aspects of his films are the quality of its cinematography. As of 2014, four of his films have been Oscar-nominated in the Best Cinematography category: Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005) and The Tree of Life (2011). Only Days of Heaven (1978) managed to win in the category and still is the only Oscar ever given to a Malick film.

His film To the Wonder (2012) was the last film that Roger Ebert reviewed.

After forty-three years of film career, he was photographed and caught on film while on set for one of the first times ever during the weekend of September 16, 2011.

Originally worked on a screenplay limited to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's attempts to start a revolution in Bolivia. When financing fell through, he left the project, and subsequently Steven Soderbergh agreed to direct a film inspired by Malick's script that finally became Che: Part Two (2008).

Adopting a Kubrickian pace of movie-making, he directed The New World (2005) and the autobiographical The Tree of Life (2011) with gaps of only seven and six years, respectively, between release. However, he reportedly was working on ideas for "The Tree of Life" since the late 70s, including exposing footage that found its way into his finished film.

In 2004, during the filming of The New World (2005), Malick forced Christopher Plummer to climb a tall oak tree. The task was very difficult for Plummer, who was 74 at the time, and took 3 unsuccessful attempts before Malick was satisfied with his performance. This footage was not used in the final film.

Attended St. Stephen's High School in Austin, Texas, where he played football. A resident of Austin, he was inducted there into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in March 2002.

He then took a self-imposed retirement of nearly two decades from film-making before lensing his 1998 adaptation of James Jones's The Thin Red Line (1998), which was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including nods for Malick for directing and adapted screenplay.

Wrote an unused draft of Great Balls of Fire! (1989).

After meeting in Paris in 1981, Malick recommended to Martin Sheen that he should read The Brothers Karamazov. Sheen credits Malick as being a key to his own spiritual reawakening.

Turned down an offer to direct The Elephant Man (1980).

Spent most of his twenty-year hiatus in France, where he taught philosophy from 1979-94.

After Days of Heaven (1978), it was a full twenty years before he directed his next film, The Thin Red Line (1998).

His first two films were the now critically acclaimed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978).

He wrote the screenplay for the 1972 Alan Arkin trucker movie Deadhead Miles (1972), which was many miles from Harvard let along Oxford, and for the 1972 Paul Newman-Lee Marvin contemporary oater Pocket Money (1972), another departure from fields of academia. "Deadhead Miles" was dumped by Paramount as unreleasable and "Pocket Money", despite being headlined by two Top Ten Box Office stars, flopped. It was an inauspicious start to a legendary career, but it influenced Malick to begin directing his own scripts.

Wrote a treatment for Dirty Harry (1971) but none of his work appears in the final version.

Malick did not get his PhD in philosophy: Instead, he attended the American Film Institute Conservatory in its inaugural year (1969), taking a Masters of Fine Arts degree in film-making.

His masters thesis was the seventeen-minute comedy short Lanton Mills (1969), which starred Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton. Malick himself acted in the short. At A. F. I. , Malick made a lasting association with Jack Fisk, who would establish himself as an Oscar-nominated art director and production designer and serve as art director on all of Malick's films. He also picked up Mike Medavoy as an agent, who got Malick work doctoring scripts and marketed his original ones.

Had been in Bolivia as a journalist in 1966 working on a story about Che Guevera.

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, but did not finish his thesis on Martin Heidegger, allegedly because of a disagreement with his advisor. Returning to the States, he taught philosophy at M. I. T. and published a translation of Heidegger's "Vom Wesen des Grundes" as "The Essence of Reasons".

According to himself, the sense of spontaneity captured in his films has been inspired by Viaggio in Italia (1954).

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 636-639. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.