Zemeckis, Robert << zuh MEK is, ROB uhrt >> (1952-…), is an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, and producer known for films that combine creativity with box-office success. Zemeckis won the 1995 Academy Award as best director for Forrest Gump (1994). The film also won the Oscar for best picture. The title character of Forrest Gump is a simple-minded young man who is present at many significant historical events of the late 1900’s. The movie became one of the greatest box-office hits in history.
Zemeckis directed the imaginative Back to the Future trilogy, which consists of Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989), and Back to the Future Part III (1990). These three popular films mix science fiction and comedy as they follow the adventures of a teenage time traveler, played by the Canadian-born actor Michael J. Fox . Zemeckis directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), a satirical detective story that combines live action and animation. Cast Away (2000) deals with a man stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island after a plane crash. The Polar Express (2004), which Zemeckis also wrote, is an animated adaptation of a beloved children’s book by the American author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg . Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express all feature the American actor Tom Hanks .
Zemeckis was born on May 14, 1952, in Chicago. He graduated from the film school of the University of Southern California in 1973. The American filmmaker Steven Spielberg selected Zemeckis to direct I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Zemeckis’s first feature film. Zemeckis co-wrote the film with the American screenwriter Bob Gale, with whom he collaborated on several other films. Zemeckis’s first hit was the adventure comedy-drama Romancing the Stone (1984). His other films include Used Cars (1980), Death Becomes Her (1992), What Lies Beneath (2000), Flight (2012), The Walk (2015), and Allied (2016). He also directed the performance-capture animated films Beowulf (2007), based on the ancient legend, and Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009), a retelling of the Dickens, Charles classic. Performance capture, also called motion capture , is a technique that records the actions of human actors and uses the information to create an animated character that moves in the same general way as the live actor.
