Jonathan Demme

Jeffrey Mayer/Star File

Jonathan Demme
American motion-picture director Jonathan Demme weaves bizarre characters and unusual plot-twists into his films. His 1991 film,
Silence of the Lambs, won five Academy Awards.

(1944- )

American motion-picture director and screenwriter, who has directed a range of critically
acclaimed dramas, comedies, and documentaries. Demme's films are distinguished by
eccentric characters, unconventional plots, and the imaginative use of sound tracks.

Born in Baldwin, New York, Demme studied at the University of Florida and wrote film
reviews for his college newspaper before moving to New York City, where he worked
from 1966 to 1968 as a publicist for film production companies. In the early 1970s he
wrote screenplays for low-budget action films, including Angles Hard as They Come
(1971), Black Mama, White Mama (1972), and The Hot Box (1972). The first film he
directed was Caged Heat (1974), set inside a women's prison.

Demme won critical acclaim for his directing work on Citizens Band (also known as
Handle with Care, 1977), a comedy about a community transformed by the citizens band
radio craze of the 1970s. More success followed with Melvin and Howard (1980), a
fictionalized story of wealthy recluse Howard Hughes. Demme then directed the 1984
concert film Stop Making Sense, featuring performances by the rock-and-roll group
Talking Heads, before making the dark comedy Something Wild (1986). He switched
genres again with Swimming to Cambodia (1987), which portrays American actor
Spalding Gray delivering a long monologue on his experiences making the 1984 war film
The Killing Fields. Demme followed this with the popular comedy Married to the Mob
(1988).

In 1991 Demme’s thriller The Silence of the Lambs appeared. The film is a riveting and
unsettling story starring Jodie Foster as a federal agent who tracks down one serial killer
by consulting with another. The Silence of the Lambs won five Academy Awards in
1991. Demme's other films include Cousin Bobby (1992), a documentary portrait of his
cousin, a priest in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood; Philadelphia (1993), a drama
featuring Tom Hanks as a young lawyer with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS); and Beloved (1998), a drama about the legacy of slavery. Beloved was adapted
from the novel by Toni Morrison and starred Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.