Roger Deakins

Biography

Roger Deakins has been nominated eight times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Cited was his work on Joel & Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men; Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption; Martin Scorsese’s Kundun; Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Stephen Daldry’s The Reader (shared credit with Chris Menges); and Joel Coen’s Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

He has been nominated nine times for the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Award. Cited was his work on the eight features listed above, as well as on Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. Mr. Deakins has won the ASC Award twice, for his cinematography of The Man Who Wasn’t There and The Shawshank Redemption.

His other films with the Coen Brothers are Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and The Hudsucker Proxy. For his work on the latter, he was a British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) Award nominee; he subsequently won the BSC Award for his cinematography O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Mr. Deakins’ many other features as director of photography include Michael Radford’s 1984, White Mischief, and Another Time, Another Place; Mike Figgis’ Stormy Monday; Alex Cox’ Sid and Nancy; Bob Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon; David Mamet’s Homicide, for which he was a Film Independent Spirit Award nominee; John Sayles’ Passion Fish; Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking; Edward Zwick’s Courage Under Fire and The Siege; Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane and telefilm Dinner with Friends; Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind; Sam Mendes’ Jarhead; Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah; and John Wells’ soon-to-be-released The Company Men.

The U.K. native studied graphic design at the Bath School of Art and Design before attending the National Film and Television School. After graduation, he worked on documentaries, as both director and camera man/cinematographer, for both film and television. Among the documentaries he worked on were Around the World with Ridgeway – Round the World Yacht Race, and ones on the liberation wars in Eritrea and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).