Marc Forster (born November 30, 1969 in Illertissen near Ulm, Germany) is a German-Swiss film director and screenwriter.

Life and career

Marc Forster was born the son of a German doctor and a Swiss architect and grew up in Davos, a winter resort in eastern Switzerland. Very young, his family moved to Switzerland after learning that his family was blacklisted by the Baader-Meinhoff group, a splinter group of the German terrorist organisation RAF. Although he was born in Germany and speaks "Hochdeutsch" (German as spoken in Germany) as well as Swiss-German, he is a Swiss national. The first film he saw in a cinema was Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola, when he was 12. He was so excited about it, that from that time on he didn't hesitate when asked about his dream job: "Director".

In 1990, when he was 20 years old, Forster moved to New York. For the next three years, he attended New York University's film school, making several documentary films. In 1995, he moved to Hollywood and shot an experimental low budget film ($10,000) called Loungers, which won the Slamdance Audience Award. Forster's first motion picture was the psychological drama Everything Put Together, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

His breakthrough film was Monster's Ball (2001), in which he directed Halle Berry in her Academy Award-winning performance as the wife of a man on death row. His next film, Finding Neverland (2004), was based on the life of author J.M. Barrie. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Forster received BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, and Golden Globe nominations for his direction.

The thriller Stay (2005) was poorly received by critics, despite a complex visual style and an experienced cast, which included Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. The film grossed a scant $4 million (USD) in the United States. Stranger than Fiction (2006), a surreal romantic comedy starring Will Ferrell, was a modest success at the box office, earning $54 million worldwide off a $30 million budget.

Forster then directed an adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, scripted by repeat collaborator David Benioff and starring British newcomer Khalid Abdalla. The film follows an Afghani-American man who returns to his war-ravaged country to save the son of his former best friend. The Kite Runner was released on December 14, 2007.

In a complete turnaround in his usual field of films, the director is currently filming the twenty-second James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Principal photography for the movie began on January 2, 2008 and it is scheduled for release on October 31, 2008.

Humanitarian efforts

Marc Forster was, together with Renée Zellweger, part of the 2005 HIV prevention campaign of the Swiss federal health department. He's shown smiling and making the V sign with his hand and the text "Don't take semen or blood into the mouth" and "Penetrate only with preservatives".

Selected filmography

Year	Title	No. of Oscar nominations	No. of Oscar wins
1995	Loungers
2000	Everything Put Together
2001	Monster's Ball	2	1
2004	Finding Neverland	7	1
2005	Stay
2006	Stranger Than Fiction
2007	The Kite Runner	1
2008	Quantum of Solace

References

External links

• Marc Forster at the Internet Movie Database