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John Landis
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John Landis

John Landis began his career as a mail boy at 20th Century Fox. After years as a writer, stuntman, actor, extra and production assistant on many movies, he rose to international recognition when he directed the 1977 blockbuster National Lampoon's Animal House. Since then, he has gone on to direct some of the most popular films of the last two decades, including such hit comedies as The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, Coming to America and Beverly Hills Cop III. Landis' other credits include the cult favorite Schlock, Kentucky Fried Movie, An American Werewolf in London, The Twilight Zone, Into the Night, Amazon Women on the Moon, Oscar, Innocent Blood and The Stupids. In addition, he directed Michael Jackson in the now-classic long form music videos Thriller and Black or White.

For television, under the St. Clare Entertainment banner, Landis was executive producer and often director of the ACE and Emmy Award-winning HBO comedy series Dream On. He was also executive producer on the series Campus Cops and Weird Science, both for the USA Network and the movies-of-the-week Here Come The Munsters and The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas for the Fox Broadcast Network. He is currently executive producing the weekly series Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The Series for Buena Vista Television.

Landis has garnered numerous awards and accolades for his work, including several NAACP Image Awards, People's Choice Awards, Cable Ace Awards for Dream On and various international film festival awards. In 1985, he was honored by the French Government when he was given the prestigious Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 1994, the Edinburgh Film Festival held a career retrospective of his work. The week after completing principal photography on Blues Brothers 2000, Landis traveled to Rimini, Italy, where he was awarded the Federico Fellini Prize.

As a representative of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Landis has lectured at various film schools and universities, including Yale, Harvard, NYU, UCLA, UCSB, USC, Texas A&M, University of Miami and Indiana University. He is also an advisor at the Sundance Institute in Utah.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Landis and his family moved to Los Angeles soon after his birth. He is married to Deborah Nadoolman, an Oscar ™ - nominated costume designer, with whom he has two children.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2002.

John Landis Facts

OccupationDirector, Producer
BirthdayAugust 3, 1950 (73)
SignLeo
BirthplaceChicago, Illinois, USA

Selected Filmography

Not available.