Mark Romanek

Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek (2010)
Born	(1959-09-18) September 18, 1959 (age 57) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1985–present
Spouse(s)	Brigette McWilliams

Mark Romanek (born September 18, 1959) is an American filmmaker whose directing work includes feature films, television, music videos and commercials. Romanek wrote and directed the 2002 film One Hour Photo and directed the 2010 film Never Let Me Go. His most notable music videos include "Hurt" (Johnny Cash), "Closer" (Nine Inch Nails), "Bedtime Story" (Madonna), and "Scream" (Michael & Janet Jackson). Romanek's music videos have won 20 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Direction for Jay-Z's "99 Problems", and he has won three Grammy Awards for Best Short Form Music Video - more than any other director.

Romanek was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Shirlee and Marvin Romanek. He credits seeing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of nine with inspiring him to become a film director. He experimented with Super 8 and 16mm film as a teenager while attending New Trier High School. There, he studied first with Kevin Dole, a local filmmaker who was already creating a form of music video on his own in the mid-1970s, and then with Peter Kingsbury, a filmmaker who had studied with experimentalists Owen Land, John Luther Schofill, and Stan Brakhage at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Both teachers exposed students to works by significant figures of the American avant-garde cinema, such as Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Paul Sharits.