SIDNEY LUMET Biography - Theater, Opera and Movie personalities

 
 

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SIDNEY LUMET

Name: Sidney Lumet                                                                     
Born: 25 June 1924 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.                                     
                                                                                       
Sidney Lumet (born June 25, 1924) is an Academy Award-winning American film             
director, with over 50 films to his name, including the critically acclaimed 12         
Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and         
The Verdict (1982), all of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best         
Director. He won an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, for his "brilliant 
services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture".             
                                                                                       
Lumet was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Eugenia (née Wermus),         
an actress, and Baruch Lumet, a Yiddish theater actor, director, producer and           
writer. He was the former son-in-law of Lena Horne as he was married to her             
daughter, the journalist and author Gail Lumet Buckley (née Gail Jones). The           
couple had two children before divorcing. He has also been married three other         
times, including once to Gloria Vanderbilt.                                             
                                                                                       
A graduate of the Professional Children's School, Lumet was an actor before he         
was a director. Lumet made his stage debut at New York's Yiddish Art Theater at         
the age of four and acted in Yiddish theater and on Broadway into the 1950s.           
                                                                                       
At a press conference following a New York Film Festival press screening of his         
2007 film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Lumet announced his intention to         
shoot all future projects on HD instead of film, and predicted that celluloid           
would be abandoned by most of the industry within five years.                           
                                                                                       
In the 2002 Sight and Sound Directors' poll, Lumet revealed his top-ten films:         
The Best Years of Our Lives, Fanny and Alexander, The Godfather, The Grapes of         
Wrath, Intolerance, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Ran, Roma, Singin' in the Rain,         
and 2001: A Space Odyssey.