Roger Deakins BSC
"Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph. If you can light and photograph the human face to bring out what's within that human face you can do anything." - Roger Deakins
A frequent collaborator of offbeat visionary auteurs the Coen brothers, Roger Deakins's work as cinematographer on such features as The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, all Oscar-nominated for Best Cinematography, has earned him a reputation as one of the premier cinematic visionaries of his generation.
Born in Devon, England, Deakins initially studied graphic design, a career path that eventually led him to realize his love for still photography. After graduating from the National Film and Television School in 1975, Deakins was commissioned to create a photographic documentary on his hometown, an assignment that found him focusing on documentary filmmaking for the next seven years.
In 1983 NFTS graduate Michael Radford approached Roger to work as cinematographer on the fiction feature Another Time, Another Place. The mid-'80s found Deakins virtually abandoning documentary filmmaking for work on such strikingly visual efforts as 1984 and Sid and Nancy; and following his work on the 1988 film The Moon Woman, he has worked primarily in the United States.
Deakins' remarkable work on the Coen brothers 1991 film Barton Fink proved the beginning of an enduring partnership, and since then, the cinematographer has been behind the camera for virtually all of the eccentric pair's highly stylized efforts. Increasingly prolific in Hollywood since the mid-'90s, Deakins has balanced lensing such blockbusters as Courage Under Fire, Thirteen Days, and A Beautiful Mind with such lesser-known efforts as The Secret Garden and Anywhere But Here.
Deakins recently re-teamed with the Coen brothers for The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and the 2008 Oscar-nominatedNo Country for Old Men.
The American Society of Cinematographers have given Roger a double nomination this year for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases, for both No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford . AMPAS has also nominated Deakins for Best Cinematography Oscar for both films, and he was awarded the Best Cinematography BAFTA for No Country for Old Men.
Other recent work includes M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, the Sam Mendes film Jarhead, and In The Valley of Elah.
Roger's next Coen Brothers collaboration, Hail Caesar is due for release in 2009.
View the IMDb record for Roger Deakins
Read a Hollywood Interview with Roger Deakins
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