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Biography - Born 03/28/1969
As a precocious youngster growing up in Miami, Florida, director Brett Ratner channeled his energy into becoming one of the hottest young directors of his time. After spending his childhood enthusiastically filming his friends with a camcorder, yet not-so-enthusiastically doing his schoolwork, Ratner was accepted to NYU, a school he chose primarily because it was Martin Scorsese's alma mater, at the age of 16. He was required to pitch his burgeoning directing skills as worthy of admittance to the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at NYU due to his lackluster academic record (after being initially rejected he begged the dean to view his films to keep him from "living on my mom's couch in Miami the rest of my life."). NYU was impressed enough to let Ratner enroll, despite being the youngest member of his class.
His senior year at NYU, Ratner applied for dozens of scholarships to help fund his senior project. He was granted only one, from Steven Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment. The project was a documentary about a child star made famous by appearing in Underwood lunch meat commercials. Ratner received considerable attention for his film, titled "Whatever Happened to Mason Reese" and through his friendship with hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, began directing videos.
Over the next decade, Ratner made more than 100 videos, working with the industry's hottest stars including Wu Tang Clan, Jay Z, D'Angelo, Puff Daddy, Mariah Carey and Madonna. His break into features came when the original director of "Money Talks" dropped out of the project and Ratner was brought in. He made an impressive debut with this film which revitalized Charlie Sheen's career and also starred Chris Tucker, Heather Locklear and Paul Sorvino.
Ratner's next project was directing Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in a unique fish-out-of water/buddy comedy, "Rush Hour" (1998). Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Ratner was a hot director. "Rush Hour"(1998) would end up earning $250 million worldwide and was New Line Cinema's highest grossing film up to that date. The careers of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan also took off and plans were immediately made for a sequel. Expectations were high for the second installment of this action-comedy series, which paired the high-pitched, wise-cracking Tucker with the naively hyper martial arts master Chan. But no one could have predicted the success of "Rush Hour 2" (2001) which had the highest opening comedy weekend box office gross (on a non-holiday) in history. Ratner was now established as formidable directing talent and had just only reached his 31st birthday.
In between the "Rush Hour" movies, Ratner sought a departure from urban and action comedies. After a fair amount of convincing on his part, Ratner was taken on board to direct "The Family Man" (2000), starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. The film, a "It's A Wonderful Life" tale of what-might-have-been, had modest success with the box office and critics. However, the phenomenal success of "Rush Hour 2" left no question where Ratner's strength as a director laid. He landed the much-coveted director's job on "Red Dragon" (lensed 2002), the prequel to "Silence of the Lambs" (1991) starring Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton along with Emily Watson and Harvey Keitel. At the end of 2002 Ratner was demonstrating his potential versatility juggling two disparate, long-aborning projects: Warner Bros.' much-delayed update of the "Superman" franchise but he eventually became one of several directors to exit the project, instead helming the aimible but unambitious caper film "After the Sunset" (2004) starring Pierce Brosnan as a retired jewel thief living in paradise and tempted by one last tantalyzing score. Ratner next turned his energies to helming "Rush Hour 3" (lensed 2004).
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