Biography: Edward Norton

Edward Norton has acted in such films as Gregory Hoblit’s Primal Fear, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt, Tony Kaye’s American History X, John Dahl’s Rounders, David Fincher’s Fight Club, Frank Oz’s TheScore, Danny De Vito’s Death to Smoochy, Julie Taymor’s Frida, Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon, Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, F. Gary Gray’s The Italian Job, David Jacobson’s Down in the Valley, Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, Neil Burger’s The Illusionist, John Curran’s The Painted Veil and Stone, Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk, Gavin O’Connor’s Pride & Glory, Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, and Tony Gilroy’s upcoming The Bourne Legacy.

He has been nominated for two Academy Awards, for Primal Fear and American History X; and won a Golden Globe Award for the former, along with numerous other awards for his performances.

Mr. Norton produced and directed the feature film Keeping the Faith. He founded and runs Class 5 Films, in partnership with Academy Award nominated screenwriter Stuart Blumberg and producer Bill Migliore. Class 5’s first two features, David Jacobson’s Down in theValley and John Curran’s The Painted Veil, were released in 2006.Class 5 more recently produced Leaves of Grass, written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson; and Mr. Blumberg’s directorial debut, Thanks for Sharing. The company is developing adaptations of Dan O’Brien’s Buffalo for the Broken Heart and Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, for which Mr. Norton is writing the screenplay.

Class 5’s most recent documentary, By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, aired on HBO in November 2009; it won an Emmy Award and was nominated for two more. Class 5’s other documentaries include Jim Norton’s The Great RiversExpedition and David Sampliner’s Dirty Work; the latter premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on the Sundance Channel. Class 5 also collaborated with the Sea Studios Foundation on their highly acclaimed, multi-million dollar series about earth system sciences for National Geographic, Strange Days on Planet Earth, which Edward Norton hosted and narrated, and which premiered on PBS in April 2008.

Class 5 is currently working in partnership with Brad Pitt’s Plan B and National Geographic to produce an epic miniseries for HBO based on Stephen Ambrose’s acclaimed book Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Edward Norton and Mr. Pitt will executive produce the miniseries.

This biography/filmography of Bruce Willis is courtesy of Focus Features and the film, Moonrise Kingdom