Bryan Singer | |
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Singer at the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival in 2015
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Born |
Bryan Jay Singer September 17, 1965 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Occupation | Film director, film producer, writer, actor |
Years active | 1988–present |
Partner(s) | Michelle Clunie (2014–present) |
Children | 1 |
Bryan Jay Singer (born September 17, 1965) is an American film director, film producer, writer, and actor. He is the founder of Bad Hat Harry Productions and he has produced or co-produced almost all of the films he has directed. He wrote and directed his first film in 1988 after graduating from university. His next film, Public Access (1993), was a co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. In the mid-1990s, Singer received critical acclaim for directing the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), which starred Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro and Kevin Spacey. He followed this with another thriller, Apt Pupil (1998), about a boy's fascination with a Nazi war criminal.
In the 2000s, he became known for big budget superhero films such as X-Men (2000), for which Singer won the 2000 Saturn Award for Best Direction, its sequel X2 (2003), and Superman Returns (2006). He then directed the WWII historical thriller Valkyrie (2008), co-wrote/co-produced X-Men: First Class (2011), and directed the fantasy adventure film Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), as well as two more X-Men films, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). He has also directed and produced television shows, including two episodes of House in 2004.
Singer was born in New York City, and was adopted by Grace Sinden, an environmental activist, and Norbert Dave Singer, a corporate executive. He grew up in a Jewish household in West Windsor Township, New Jersey. He attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (formerly just West Windsor-Plainsboro High School), graduating in 1984. For college, Singer studied filmmaking for two years at New York's School of Visual Arts and later transferred to the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. Actors Lori and Marc Singer are his cousins.