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More Oliver Stone Bios & Profiles

 

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Biography #2 (for Alexander)

Oliver Stone has worked as a school teacher in Vietnam, a Merchant Marine sailor in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, a taxi driver, a messenger, a production assistant, and a sales representative for a sports film company, all of these in New York City. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He was wounded twice and decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam, he completed his undergraduate series at New York University Film School in 1971.

Stone has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards as a screenwriter, director and producer. He has won Oscars for writing Midnight Express and as director for both Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon. He has also received three Golden Globes for directing (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK), one for writing (Midnight Express) and was nominated for Best Director for Natural Born Killers and co-writing for Nixon.

Stone is a contributor of some 200 pages of essays on movies, culture, politics and history as published in the book Oliver Stone's USA. His first novel was published in 1997 by St. Martin's Press entitled A Child's Night Dream, based on Stone's experiences as a young man.

His documentary film Persona non Grata, a series of conversations with current and past Israeli and Palestinian leaders and militants, debuted on HBO in the spring of 2003. Comandante was controversially shelved by the cable network, which then broadcast Stone's second documentary about Castro, Looking for Fidel, in April 2004.

Stone has directed the feature films Any Given Sunday ('99), U-Turn ('97), Nixon ('95), Natural Born Killers ('94), Heaven and Earth ('93), JFK ('91), The Doors ('91), Born on the Fourth of July ('89), Talk Radio ('88), Wall Street ('87), Platoon ('86), Salvador ('86), The Hand ('81) and Seizure ('73).

His writing credits apart from his directed films include: Midnight Express, Scarface, Conan the Barbarian, Year of the Dragon and Evita.

His producing credits are: The People vs. Larry Flynt, The Joy Luck Club, Reversal of Fortune, Savior, Freeway, South Central, Zebrahead, Blue Steel and the ABC mini-series Wild Palms. Apart from his directed films, as a producer Stone has won an Emmy for the HBO film Indictment: The McMartin Trial and was nominated for the documentary The Last Days of Kennedy and King.

Bio courtesy Warner Bros. for "Alexander" (21-Nov-2004)


Biography #3

Oliver Stone has consistently pushed the filmmaking envelope as a writer, director, and producer, with works that have won critical acclaim and provoked passionate debate.

Stone most recently directed U-Turn with Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte. His previous film, Nixon, received four Academy Award nominations, for acting (in two categories), screenplay and score, and has been widely acclaimed by critics for its balanced and empathetic portrait of Richard Nixon.

His 1991 film, JFK, re-ignited an intense national debate about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Widely praised by film critics and audiences, JFK was a box-office success. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two. The controversy created by the film resulted in Congress passing a bill, signed into law by President George Bush, opening millions of pages of government documents on the Kennedy assassination which were to have been sealed for many decades to come an unprecedented government reaction to a motion picture.

Stone has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards, as screenwriter, producer and director, and has won three Oscars (for writing Midnight Express, and as director of Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon).

Stone has also won two Directors Guild of America Awards, for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Midnight Express. He has received three Golden Globe Awards for directing (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and JFK) and one for writing (Midnight Express). In 1996, Stone was voted Best Director by the Chicago Film Critics for Nixon. He also was decorated by the French Government in 1992 as a Chevalier dans les Ordres d'Arte et Lettres.

Stone often travels around American colleges for talks with students. He is a contributor of some 200 pages of essays on movies, culture, politics, and history in the forthcoming book Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History and Controversy (University Press of Kansas) which includes essays by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., David Halberstam, Walter Lafeber, Stephen Ambrose, George McGovern and Robert Rosenstone, and is edited by Robert Toplin.

Stone wrote his first novel for St. Martin's Press, A Child's Night Dream (1997), based on his experiences as a 19-year-old youth. Born in New York of a French mother and an American father, Stone has been a schoolteacher, a taxi driver and a merchant sailor. He served in the U.S. Infantry in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, was wounded twice in battle and decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam he completed his undergraduate degree studies at New York University Film School.

Stone has directed U-Turn (‘97), Nixon ('95), Natural Born Killers ('94), Heaven and Earth ('93), JFK ('91), The Doors ('91), Born on the Fourth of July ('89), Talk Radio ('88), Wall Street ('87), Platoon ('86), Salvador ('86), The Hand ('81) and Seizure ('73).

He has written or co-written Nixon, Evita, Natural Born Killers, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Salvador, Year of the Dragon, Conan the Barbarian, Seizure, Heaven and Earth, Platoon, Scarface, The Hand and Midnight Express.

In addition to co-producing some of the films which he directed, Stone has either executive produced, produced or co-produced the features The Corruptor, Gravesend (presenter), Savior, Freeway, Killer: A Journal of Murder, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, The New Age, The Joy Luck Club, South Central, Zebrahead, Iron Maze, Blue Steel and Reversal of Fortune. For television, Stone produced the documentary Assassinated: The Last Days of Kennedy and King, the miniseries Wild Palms and Indictment: The McMartin Trial, for which he received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Movie Made for Television.

Stone is the father of three children, lives in Los Angeles, and hopes to die in 2036.

Bio courtesy Warner Bros. (01-Jan-2000)