David Paul Cronenberg (born March 16, 1943 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian horror and science fiction film director, who has also worked as an actor. He is famous for creating the genre of "body horror", exploring people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical.
Cronenberg's father was a journalist and his mother a pianist. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in literature.
Cronenberg's films follow a definite progression, a movement from the social world to the inner life. In his early films, scientists modify human bodies, which results in social anarchy (e.g. Shivers, Rabid). In his middle period, the chaos wrought by the scientist is more personal, (e.g. The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome). In the later period, the scientist himself is altered by his hubris (e.g. Cronenberg's remake of The Fly). This trajectory culiminates in Dead Ringers, in which a twin pair of gynecologists spiral into codependency and drug addiction.
Cronenberg's later films tend more to the psychological, often contrasting subjective and objective realities (eXistenZ, M. Butterfly, Spider).
In most projects, Cronenberg tries to represent The New Flesh, which explains the mutation of human body or living organism by a machine or any other mutated organism, into the New Flesh. In both options, the flesh is supposed to be distorted by man who creates the machinery or the organisms.
At one stage he was considered by George Lucas as a possible director for 'Return of the Jedi' but was passed. Cronenberg also worked for a time on "Total Recall" but this also passed to another Director. In the late 1990s he was announced as Director of a sequel to "Basic Instinct" but this fell through.
Cronenberg has also appeared in the films of other directors as an actor. Most of his roles are cameo appearances, as in Into The Night or Alias, but on occasion he has played major roles, as in Nightbreed or Last Night .
Selected films
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