Todd Haynes (Los Angeles, 1961) is an acclaimed American independent film director and screenwriter. After college, Haynes moved to New York City where he made his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), using Barbie dolls to portray the life and death of singer Karen Carpenter. Haynes made his directorial feature debut with the provocative 1991 film, Poison, which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, spearheading what would become known as the New Queer Cinema. In 1995, Haynes’s 2nd feature film, Safe, starred Julianne Moore as a Los Angeles housewife who becomes environmentally ill. The film would be voted, by decade’s end, the best film of the 90’s by the Village Voice’s Critic Poll. Haynes’s next film, Velvet Goldmine, an homage to the glam rock era of the early 70’s premiered in Official Selection at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Prize. Haynes’s next film, Far From Heaven (2002), inspired by the 50’s melodrama’s of Douglas Sirk, also starring Julianne Moore, earned both critical and mainstream success, receiving four Oscar nominations, including one for Haynes’ Original Screenplay. Haynes won several other awards for this film, including the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. His 2007 film, I’m Not There, imagined the life and work of Bob Dylan through the guise of seven fictional characters, and once again won him critical acclaim, especially for the cross-gender casting of Cate Blanchett, who received the Oscar nomination and Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2011, Haynes directed and co-wrote Mildred Pierce, a five-hour miniseries starring Kate Winslet, which garnered 21 Emmy nominations, winning five of them, in addition to 3 Golden Globes Awards. 2015’s Carol, is based on Patricia Highsmith’s seminal novel The Price of Salt. Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, Carol received much critical acclaim and many accolades including six Academy Award nominations, five Golden Globe Award nominations, and nine BAFTA Award nominations. It has also been voted the Number 1 LGBT Film of All Time by BFI.
