"In Focus" is our new series that, yes, focuses on influential directors, how they got their start and their influence on the industry -- along with a healthy dose of trivia.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu doesn't exactly make the most cuddly, family-friendly movies around. He's more known for his raw dramas that unite the lives of total strangers, like Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. In recent years he's gotten off of the interwoven-stories kick and is instead focusing a bit more on individual characters. That worked out incredibly well for him on his last film, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), a hit with audiences and an even bigger hit with awards groups (it received nine Oscar nominations, four of which it won), and so he's gone a similar route with his next movie. It's a stunning period piece called The Revenant and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a father who fights his way back from the brink of death in order to get revenge on the man who wronged him (Tom Hardy).
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Age: 52
Born: Mexico City, Mexico
Best Known For: Birdman, 21 Grams, Biutiful
Before He Was a Director: Though Iñárritu is now known for writing and directing most of his own movies, his first step into the film industry was actually as a composer. During the late '80s he wrote the score for four small, independent Mexican feature films, but he moved away from the sound stages after striking up with writer Guillermo Arriaga, whom he would go on to partner with on a number of films. His career as a feature director didn't really kick off until 1999, however, and he spent the intervening decade producing, writing or directing various shorts and ads in and around Mexico.
First Feature Film: After years spent making shorts, 2000 saw Iñárritu finally making the plunge into feature filmmaking with Amores Perros. The drama about three lives that intersect one another following a car accident enjoyed its world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival where it won the Critics' Week Grand Prize. It would then go on to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. It lost that award to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, though it did win the equivalent award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Fun Fact: Amores Perros was also the first feature film of star Gael García Bernal. He actually had only ever considered acting as a small hobby until Iñárritu cast him.
The Hollywood Jump: Winning a major prize like the Critics Week at Cannes is a pretty surefire way to get Hollywood's attention and just three years later saw the premiere of Iñárritu's first English-language film, 21 Grams. Like Amores Perros, it employs a strangers-connected-by-accident structure, but this time Hollywood's finest came calling and the film earned two Academy Award nominations for acting; Naomi Watts for Best Actress and Benicio Del Toro for Best Actor.
Fun Fact: Naomi Watts signed on for the role without even reading the script. It would become her first Oscar nomination.
Trivia: Iñárritu received his first Oscar nominations in 2007 for Babel (Best Picture and Director). Though he lost, this was actually the first time a Mexican director had been nominated for Best Director by the Academy. He wouldn't return as a nominee for another eight years, but when he showed up with Birdman at the 2015 Academy Awards, Iñárritu would go on to win all three nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Motion Picture of the Year.
Iñárritu spent the '90s directing commercials, but he didn't give it up entirely after making the move to features. He actually directed an award-winning segment of those BMW ads from the early 2000s starring Clive Owen as a driver hired by the UN to rescue a war photographer.
He also directed this Nike ad that would also go on to win the top prize at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.
