Tom Hooper (director) - Early Life

Early Life

Tom Hooper was born in London, England, in 1972, to Meredith and Richard Hooper. Meredith was an Australian author and academic and Richard was an English media businessman. Hooper was educated at Highgate School and Westminster School. His initial interest in drama was triggered by his English and drama teacher at Highgate, former Royal Shakespeare Company actor Roger Mortimer, who produced an annual school play.

At the age of 12, Hooper read a book entitled How to Make Film and Television and decided he wanted to become a director. For the next year Hooper researched filmmaking from publications such as On Camera by Harris Watts. Aged 13, he made his first film, entitled Runaway Dog, using a clockwork 16mm Bolex camera his uncle had given to him. Hooper said: "The clockwork would run out after thirty seconds, so the maximum shot length was thirty seconds. I could only afford a hundred feet of Kodachrome reversal film, which cost about twenty-five, and you had to send off for two weeks to be processed. I could only make silent movies, because sound was too expensive and complicated." He slowed down the frame rate of the camera so he could maximise what little film stock he had. Hooper classified the short, about a dog which kept running away from its owner, as a comedy, and filmed it on location in Oxfordshire.

When Hooper was 14, his film Bomber Jacket came runner-up in a BBC younger filmmakers' competition. The short starred Hooper's brother as a boy who discovers a bomber jacket and a photograph hidden in a cupboard and learns his grandfather died in World War II. Another of Hooper's short films, entitled Countryside, depicts a nuclear holocaust.

Hooper finished school aged 16, then wrote the script for his first professional short film, entitled Painted Faces. He spent the next two years raising capital for the short by courting advertisement directors, whose financial dominance during the late 1980s was noticed by Hooper. Director Paul Weiland invested in the short, which provided Hooper with the equipment he needed. After two years of financing and production, Painted Faces was completed. Hooper wrote, produced, directed and edited it. It was sold to Channel 4 and broadcast on the channel's First Frame strand in 1992, had a screening at the 35th London Film Festival and had a limited theatrical release.

After taking a gap year to finance Painted Faces, Hooper read English at University College, Oxford. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, where he directed Kate Beckinsale in A View From the Bridge and Emily Mortimer in The Trial. Hooper also had his first paid directing work, earning £200 for a corporate Christmas video, and he directed his first television advertisements, including one for Sega featuring Right Said Fred. He continues to direct advertisements alongside television and film projects. In 1996 he joined the commercial production company John S. Clarke Productions and in 2001 he signed with Infinity Productions.