Christopher Nolan /

Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (born July 30, 1970) is an English/American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is known for writing and directing such critically acclaimed films as Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), and rebooting the Batman film franchise, as well as directing the Hillary Seitz written Insomnia (2002). Nolan is the founder of the production company Syncopy Films. He often collaborates with his wife, producer Emma Thomas, and his brother, screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, as well as cinematographer Wally Pfister, film editor Lee Smith, composers David Julyan and Hans Zimmer, special effects coordinator Chris Corbould, and actors Christian Bale and Michael Caine. Nolan was born in London, the son of an English father who worked as an advertising copywriter and an American mother who was a flight attendant. He has a younger brother, Jonathan, with whom Nolan often collaborates on film scripts. As a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, he spent his childhood in both London and Chicago. Nolan found an interest in botany and "dicots" early on until he found his father's camera.