Tim Burton

Tim Burton, born Timothy Walter Burton on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California, is an American filmmaker and former animator. He is credited with bringing goth subculture into the Hollywood mainstream, crafting a signature look that mixes gothic horror and dark fantasy with playful, surreal touches. Over his career, he has won an Emmy and been nominated for two Oscars, a Golden Globe, and three BAFTAs. In 2007, the Venice International Film Festival gave him its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and France awarded him the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010.

Burton’s first directorial effort was the comedy *Pee-wee’s Big Adventure* (1985), but he became widely known after *Beetlejuice* (1988) and *Edward Scissorhands* (1990). He also produced *The Nightmare Before Christmas* (1993), which started as a poem he wrote. His filmography spans many genres—animation, biopic, drama, fantasy, musical, science fiction, superhero, and supernatural horror—and includes *Batman* (1989), *Batman Returns* (1992), *Ed Wood* (1994), *Mars Attacks!* (1996), *Sleepy Hollow* (1999), *Planet of the Apes* (2001), *Big Fish* (2003), *Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* (2005), *Corpse Bride* (2005), *Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street* (2007), *Alice in Wonderland* (2010), *Dark Shadows* (2012), *Frankenweenie* (2012), *Big Eyes* (2014), *Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children* (2016), *Dumbo* (2019), and *Beetlejuice Beetlejuice* (2024).

He has directed several episodes of the Netflix series *Wednesday* (2022–present), earning a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series. Composer Danny Elfman has scored nearly all of Burton’s films—only three lack his music. Burton has also published books, including *The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories* (1997).

Burton grew up in Burbank, the son of Jean (who later ran a cat-themed gift shop) and Bill Burton, a former minor-league baseball player who worked for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. A baseball field at Burbank’s Olive Recreation Center is named after Bill. As a preteen, Burton made short films in his backyard using crude stop-motion or silent 8 mm film. One of his earliest known works, *The Island of Doctor Agor*, adapted H. G. Wells’s *The Island of Doctor Moreau* when he was 13. He attended Providencia Elementary, Luther Burbank Middle School, and Burbank High School, where he was not a strong student but played on the water polo team. After graduating in 1976, he studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia until 1979, making the shorts *Stalk of the Celery Monster* and *King and Octopus*.

An introspective child, Burton found joy in drawing, painting, and movies. His later work was shaped by childhood favorites like Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl, as well as silent gothic horror, Universal Monsters films (especially *Frankenstein*), Hammer Horror starring Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price’s horror movies. Both Lee and Price later appeared in his films, with Price narrating Burton’s short *Vincent* (1982). In a *Hollywood Reporter* article, Burton said, “I grew up watching the Universal horror movies, Japanese monster movies, and pretty much any kind of monster movie. That was my genre.” He also credited Ray Harryhausen’s work for sparking his early interest in stop-motion animation.

*Stalk of the Celery Monster* caught the attention of Walt Disney Productions, which offered him an animator’s apprenticeship. At Disney, he worked as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer, art director, and concept artist on *The Fox and the Hound* (1981), *Tron* (1982), and *The Black Cauldron* (1985), though his concept art never made it into the final films. In 1982, he made his first short, *Vincent*, a six-minute black-and-white stop-motion film based on his own poem, about a boy who imagines he is Vincent Price, with Price narrating. Produced by his friend Rick Heinrichs, the short screened at the Chicago Film Festival and ran for two weeks in one Los Angeles theater alongside the teen drama *Tex*. Next came his first live-action project, *Hansel and Gretel*, a Japanese-themed take on the Brothers Grimm tale for the Disney Channel, ending with a kung fu fight. Aired once in 1983 at 10:30 P.M. on Halloween and then shelved, prints were so rare that rumors claimed it didn’t exist. It finally surfaced at the Museum of Modern Art in 2009, then at LACMA in 2011, and again at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2012.

Burton’s next live-action short, *Frankenweenie* (1984), followed a boy who revives his dog after a car accident. Shot in black-and-white, it starred Barret Oliver, Shelley Duvall, and Daniel Stern. After its completion, Disney fired Burton, saying he had wasted company resources on a film too dark and scary for children. Actor Paul Reubens saw *Frankenweenie* and chose...