Gavin Hood

Gavin Hood
Hood at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	(1963-05-12) 12 May 1963 Johannesburg, South Africa
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter and actor
Years active	1989–present
Spouse(s)	Nerissa Black

Gavin Hood (born 12 May 1963) is a South African filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for writing and directing Tsotsi (2005), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed the films X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ender's Game and Eye in the Sky.

Directing career

Hood got his start directing when commissioned to make several short educational dramas for the South African Department of Health. His first commercial short film was The Storekeeper (1998).

Hood co-produced and wrote the script for his first feature film, A Reasonable Man (1999), which portrays the accidental killing of a young child mistaken for a tokoloshe. He then directed the Polish language 2001 feature film In Desert and Wilderness (W pustyni i w puszczy) when the original director fell ill. This was followed by Tsotsi (2005). Tsotsi won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. Hood was also nominated for the 2005 Non-European Film—Prix Screen International at the European Film Awards for his work on the film.

In 2000, Variety magazine named him as one of its "Ten Directors to Watch".^[1]

He directed Rendition (2007), his first Hollywood feature, for New Line Cinema. He also directed the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, with Hugh Jackman reprising his role from the X-Men films.^[2]

Prior to the film's release, Gavin talked about the political undertones of the new Wolverine movie:

Any movie that is simply about good versus evil...is in my view putting out into the world and certainly into a mass audience and young audience's mind a rather dangerous philosophy, which is that there is good and evil in the simplistic and easily defined way... I think that for the last eight years, we've had that philosophy very much prevalent in the Bush administration that if you're on the side of good, at least as you perceive it, then you can do no evil...That's what's so great about this character or about this movie for me and why I wanted to do it...This is a guy who recognizes his own capacity for evil and I think that's exciting in a sort of popular culture kind of way. After all, the most famous line from Wolverine, the comics, is "I am the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice."^[3]

In 2011, Hood began work at the helm of novelist Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. He wrote a draft of Card's screenplay and directed the film.^[4]^[5] Ender's Game was released in U.S. theaters on 1 November 2013.

Hood directed and acted in Eye in the Sky released on September 15, 2015 at the TIFF in Toronto, Canada.

Acting appearances

Hood also acts occasionally, most notably in In Enemy Hands and the Stargate SG-1 episode "Lockdown". In the early 90's, Hood made notable appearances in two martial arts films shot on location in South Africa. In American Kickboxer, he played the pivotal role of Ken, who is accidentally killed at a party by lead character B.J. Quinn, played by John Barrett. In Kickboxer 5, he played a German kickboxing champion who faces off, and is ultimately killed by the main antagonist Negaal, played by James Ryan. In his 2013 directorial project, Hood appeared as the voice and motion-capture performance of the Giant in the mind game of Ender's Game. In the 2015 film Eye in the Sky, Hood plays Lieutenant Colonel Ed Walsh.

Filmography

Feature films

A Reasonable Man (1999) (actor, producer, writer, director)
In Desert and Wilderness (2001) (writer, director)
Tsotsi (2005) (writer, director)
Rendition (2007) (director)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) (director)
Ender's Game (2013) (writer, director)
Eye in the Sky (2015) (actor, director)

References

↑ Higgins, Bill (31 January 2000). "'Dance till wee hours". Variety.
↑ Gilstrap, Peter; Fleming, Michael (19 July 2007). "Fox says Hood good for 'Wolverine'". Variety.
↑ "Gavin Hood: Wolverine". SuicideGirls.com. 28 April 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
↑ Zeitchik, Steven (20 September 2010). "Gavin Hood: Enders Game". LA Times.
↑ Gallagher, Brian (28 April 2011). "Ender's Game Lands at Summit Entertainment". MovieWeb.com.

External links

Gavin Hood at the Internet Movie Database
Gavin Hood at AllMovie
Gavin Hood's Scores at Rotten Tomatoes
Gavin Hood's Scores at Metacritic

Films directed by Gavin Hood

A Reasonable Man (1999) In Desert and Wilderness (2001) Tsotsi (2005) Rendition (2007) X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) Ender's Game (2013) Eye in the Sky (2015)

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Winners)

1947–1955 (Honorary)	1947: Shoe-Shine – Vittorio De Sica 1948: Monsieur Vincent – Maurice Cloche 1949: Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio De Sica 1950: The Walls of Malapaga – René Clément 1951: Rashomon – Akira Kurosawa 1952: Forbidden Games – René Clément 1954: Gate of Hell – Teinosuke Kinugasa 1955: Samurai, The Legend of Musashi – Hiroshi Inagaki

1956–1975	1956: La Strada – Federico Fellini 1957: Nights of Cabiria – Federico Fellini 1958: My Uncle – Jacques Tati 1959: Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus 1960: The Virgin Spring – Ingmar Bergman 1961: Through a Glass Darkly – Ingmar Bergman 1962: Sundays and Cybele – Serge Bourguignon 1963: 8½ – Federico Fellini 1964: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – Vittorio De Sica 1965: The Shop on Main Street – Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos 1966: A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch 1967: Closely Watched Trains – Jiří Menzel 1968: War and Peace – Sergei Bondarchuk 1969: Z – Costa-Gavras 1970: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion – Elio Petri 1971: The Garden of the Finzi Continis – Vittorio De Sica 1972: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Luis Buñuel 1973: Day for Night – François Truffaut 1974: Amarcord – Federico Fellini 1975: Dersu Uzala – Akira Kurosawa

1976–2000	1976: Black and White in Color – Jean-Jacques Annaud 1977: Madame Rosa – Moshé Mizrahi 1978: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs – Bertrand Blier 1979: The Tin Drum – Volker Schlöndorff 1980: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears – Vladimir Menshov 1981: Mephisto – István Szabó 1982: Volver a Empezar ('To Begin Again') – José Luis Garci 1983: Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman 1984: Dangerous Moves – Richard Dembo 1985: The Official Story – Luis Puenzo 1986: The Assault – Fons Rademakers 1987: Babette's Feast – Gabriel Axel 1988: Pelle the Conqueror – Bille August 1989: Cinema Paradiso – Giuseppe Tornatore 1990: Journey of Hope – Xavier Koller 1991: Mediterraneo – Gabriele Salvatores 1992: Indochine – Régis Wargnier 1993: Belle Époque – Fernando Trueba 1994: Burnt by the Sun – Nikita Mikhalkov 1995: Antonia's Line – Marleen Gorris 1996: Kolya – Jan Svěrák 1997: Character – Mike van Diem 1998: Life Is Beautiful – Roberto Benigni 1999: All About My Mother – Pedro Almodóvar 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Ang Lee

2001–present	2001: No Man's Land – Danis Tanović 2002: Nowhere in Africa – Caroline Link 2003: The Barbarian Invasions – Denys Arcand 2004: The Sea Inside – Alejandro Amenábar 2005: Tsotsi – Gavin Hood 2006: The Lives of Others – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 2007: The Counterfeiters – Stefan Ruzowitzky 2008: Departures – Yōjirō Takita 2009: The Secret in Their Eyes – Juan J. Campanella 2010: In a Better World – Susanne Bier 2011: A Separation – Asghar Farhadi 2012: Amour – Michael Haneke 2013: The Great Beauty – Paolo Sorrentino 2014: Ida – Paweł Pawlikowski 2015: Son of Saul – László Nemes

Submissions

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 54477611 LCCN: no2004026784 ISNI: 0000 0001 2133 7524 GND: 139564608 SUDOC: 113349203 BNF: cb15737687x (data)

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