Miloš Forman
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Jan Tomáš Forman (IPA: [ˈjan ˈtoma:ʃ ˈforman]) (born February 18, 1932), better known as Miloš Forman (IPA: [ˈmɪloʃ ˈforman]), is an actor, screenwriter, professor and two-time Academy Award-winning film director.
Forman was born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic) to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. He was orphaned at a very young age when his parents died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz; his father was imprisoned due to membership in a Czech Resistance group, his mother imprisoned for dealing in illegal grocery trade.
After the war, Miloš attended King George College public school in the spa town Poděbrady, where his fellow students were Václav Havel and the Mašín brothers. Later on he studied screenwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He directed several Czech comedies in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1968 when the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded the country to end the Prague Spring, he was in Paris negotiating for the production of his first American film.
The Czech studio that he worked for fired him, claiming that he was out of the country illegally. He moved to New York, where he later became a professor of film at Columbia University and co-chair (with Frantisek Daniel) of Columbia's film division. One of his proteges was future director James Mangold, who Forman had advised about scriptwriting.
In spite of initial difficulties, he started directing in his new home country, and achieved success in 1975 with the adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which won five Academy Awards including one for direction. In 1977, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Other notable successes have been Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards, and The People vs. Larry Flynt.
Forman's early movies are still very popular among Czechs. Many of the situations and phrases made it into common use: for example, the Czech term zhasnout (to switch lights off) from The Firemen's Ball, associated with petty theft in the movie, has been used to describe the large-scale asset stripping happening in the country during the 1990s.
In 1997 he received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
In 2006, Milos Forman received the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award. Presented annually since 2000 by the Prague Society for International Cooperation, recipients have been Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Conducting Corp of the Czech Philharmonic (Lukas Vondracek); Vaclav Havel (Andrej Dynko); Madeleine Albright (Petra Prohaskova); Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (David Hodin); Milos Forman (tba) and H.M. King Michael of Romania (tba). The Award carries with it a financial sum of $10,000 passed on by the recipient to a young person of outstanding character whom they have selected (in brackets).
Forman co-starred alongside Edward Norton in the actor's directorial debut Keeping the Faith (2000) as the wise friend to Norton's young, conflicted priest.
Forman's two sons Petr Forman and Matěj Forman are also movie and theatre actors.
Asteroid 11333 Forman was named after Miloš Forman.
[edit] Filmography
- Audition (1963)
- Black Peter (1964)
- Loves of a Blonde (1965)
- The Firemen's Ball (1967)
- Taking Off (1971)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
- Hair (musical, 1979)
- Ragtime (1981)
- Amadeus (1984)
- Valmont (1989)
- The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
- Man on the Moon (1999)
- Goya's Ghosts (2006)
| Preceded by Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Part II |
Academy Award for Best Director 1975 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest |
Succeeded by John G. Avildsen for Rocky |
| Preceded by James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment |
Academy Award for Best Director 1984 for Amadeus |
Succeeded by Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa |
[edit] External links
- Miloš Forman at the Internet Movie Database
- Miloš Forman, BBC News of March 2001
- Interview with Milos Forman: Defender of the Artist and the Common Man
- Courtney Love interviews Milos Forman
Black Peter (1964) • Loves of a Blonde (1965) • The Firemen's Ball (1967) • Taking Off (1971) • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) • Hair (1979) • Ragtime (1981) • Amadeus (1984) • Valmont (1989) • The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) • Man on the Moon (1999) • Goya's Ghosts (2006) • Amarillo Slim
Shorts: Audition (1963) • Kdyby ty muziky nebyly (1963)
Co-Director: Laterna magika II (1960) • Dobře placená procházka (TV) (1966) • I Miss Sonia Henie (1971) • Vision of Eight (1973)
Categories: Czech film directors | American film directors | English-language film directors | Best Director Academy Award winners | Best Director Golden Globe | Akira Kurosawa Award winners | Columbia University faculty | Czech expatriates | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Czech-Americans | Czech Jews | Jewish American film directors | 1932 births | Living people
