Todd Haynes

Known for DirectingBorn 1961-01-02 (age 65)Los Angeles, California, USA

Todd Haynes (/heɪnz/; born January 2, 1961; Los Angeles) is an American filmmaker. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender roles. Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which chronicles singer Karen Carpenter's life and death, using Barbie dolls as actors. Superstar became a cult classic. Haynes's feature directorial debut, Poison (1991), a provocative exploration of AIDS-era queer perceptions and subversions, established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema. Poison won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize and is regarded as a seminal work of New Queer Cinema. Haynes received further acclaim for his second feature film, Safe (1995), a symbolic portrait of a housewife who develops multiple chemical sensitivity. Safe was later voted the best film of the 1990s by The Village Voice Film Poll. His next feature, Velvet Goldmine (1998), is a tribute to the 1970s glam rock era. The film received the Special Jury Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Haynes gained acclaim and a measure of mainstream success with Far from Heaven (2002) earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He continued to direct critically lauded films such as I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015), Wonderstruck (2017) and Dark Waters (2019). He directed his first feature-length documentary, The Velvet Underground (2021). Haynes directed and co-wrote the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards.Read more

Movies & web series

At the Video Store

Douglas Sirk – Hope as in Despair

Dark Waters: The Cost of Being a Hero

La Divina

Dark Waters

Carol

Still Alice

Six by Sondheim

Mildred Pierce

Enlightened

Far from Heaven

The Velvet Underground

Safe

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Wendy and Lucy

Madame Satã

Velvet Goldmine

Tommy's

May December

He Was Once

Totally F***ed Up

Meek's Cutoff

I'm Not There

Old Joy

Quinceañera

Wonderstruck

Great Directors

Certain Women

Xavier Dolan: Bound to Impossible

Earthquake Bird

Dottie Gets Spanked

Night Moves

Poison

At Sundance

Swoon

Goo

Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema

The Suicide

Cal State Long Beach, CA, January 2020

Office Killer

SexTV

Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud

Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter

Barbara Forever

Earthlings

Art-House America: Austin Film Society

Image Book

Marcians