Richard Kelly
Known for
Richard Kelly is an American director born in Newport News, Virginia, celebrated for Donnie Darko, his cult classic debut following a troubled teenager plagued by visions of a menacing rabbit figure and unsettling premonitions of time travel and apocalypse, which became one of the most beloved and endlessly analyzed cult films of its era despite an initially muted theatrical release. Southland Tales, an ambitious, sprawling science-fiction satire, and The Box, adapting a Richard Matheson short story about a mysterious button offering money at a moral cost, extended his fascination with metaphysical dread and reality-bending premises, though neither matched his debut's cult following. Kelly's singular, cult-defining fusion of teenage alienation and metaphysical science fiction in Donnie Darko has made him one of the most influential cult filmmakers of his generation.
Richard Kelly
6 Directed
Richard Kelly is an American director born in Newport News, Virginia, celebrated for Donnie Darko, his cult classic debut following a troubled teenager plagued by visions of a menacing rabbit figure and unsettling premonitions of time travel and apocalypse, which became one of the most beloved and endlessly analyzed cult films of its era despite an initially muted theatrical release. Southland Tales, an ambitious, sprawling science-fiction satire, and The Box, adapting a Richard Matheson short story about a mysterious button offering money at a moral cost, extended his fascination with metaphysical dread and reality-bending premises, though neither matched his debut's cult following. Kelly's singular, cult-defining fusion of teenage alienation and metaphysical science fiction in Donnie Darko has made him one of the most influential cult filmmakers of his generation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Richard Kelly and where are they from?
Richard Kelly is 51 years old, born on March 28, 1975 in Newport News, Virginia, USA.
What are the most famous roles of Richard Kelly?
Richard Kelly is best known for directing Donnie Darko, The Box, Domino.
How many movies has Richard Kelly directed?
Over a 30-year career (since 1996), Richard Kelly has directed or written 6 films and worked on 0 TV shows.
What was Richard Kelly's first movie?
The career of Richard Kelly began with Corpus Christi ().
What is Richard Kelly's most recent movie or series?
Richard Kelly's most recent release is The Box, which premiered on October 29, 2009.
Richard Kelly
1975-03-28 · Newport News, Virginia, USA
James Richard Kelly (born 1975) is an American writer-director, best known for his debut feature, the science-fiction cult classic "Donnie Darko"(2001).
Kelly was born in Newport News, Virginia, the son of Lane and Ennis Kelly. He won a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He made two short films at USC, "The Goodbye Place" and "Visceral Matter", before graduating in 1997.
"Donnie Darko" was his first feature and was nominated for 21 awards, winning 11 of them, including a nomination for a Saturn Award. The film later ended up #2 on Empire magazine's list of 50 greatest independent films of all time, behind Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs".
Kelly wrote the screenplay for Tony Scott's biographical crime thriller "Domino" (2005), and went on to write and direct the postmodern L.A. satire "Southland Tales" (2006) and the science-fiction mystery "The Box" (2009), inspired by "The Twilight Zone" episode "Button, Button". Although his three films differ considerably in setting and characters, they share similar themes of time travel, existentialism, and spirituality.
Kelly's particular filmmaking sensibilities can be traced back to his viewing of Terry Giliam's "Brazil" (1985), as told to author Robert K. Elder in an interview for his book "The Film That Changed My Life" (2011).
The commercial underperformance of Kelly's films has made it difficult for him to secure financing for other projects, and as such he has not directed a film since 2009. In 2016, filmmaker Kevin Smith said of Kelly: "He is insanely creative and is not unlike Christopher Nolan. But Nolan wound up in the Warner Bros. system where he got special handling, and he got a lot of money to make huge art films like "Inception". Richard can be one of our greatest filmmakers. He is right now, but just a lot of people don't realize it. He's still a kid, and someone needs to Nolan that kid."