Paul Greengrass

Green Zone was director PAUL GREENGRASS’ seventh feature
film. He has also had a long and distinguished career in British television.

His other feature, The Bourne Ultimatum, received three Academy Awards ® and two BAFTAs (Orange British Academy Film Awards) in 2008. The Bourne Ultimatum also won the Empire Award for Best Film and brought Greengrass Best Director honors at the London Film Critics' Circle Awards. Greengrass received Best Director nominations for The Bourne Ultimatum from the BAFTAs and Empire Awards, among others.

Greengrass previously directed The Bourne Supremacy, his first collaboration with actor Matt Damon. The 2004 action-thriller grossed more than $50 million during its domestic opening weekend and went on to earn more than $175 million at the U.S. box office and more than $287 million worldwide. It also confirmed the public's appetite for the Jason Bourne saga based on Robert Ludlum's best-selling suspense novels.

In between Bourne blockbusters, Greengrass stunned audiences with the powerful dramatic feature United 93, the story-told in real time-of passengers and crew rallying against hijackers on September 11, 2001. Greengrass wrote and directed United 93 and was one of its producers. He earned an Academy Award ® nomination for Best Director in 2007 and a Best Original Screenplay nomination from the Writers Guild of America. He won BAFTA's David Lean Award for Direction and Best Director awards from the London Film Critics' Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, among others.

In 2002, Greengrass illuminated a dark day in Irish history with another haunting drama, Bloody Sunday. Greengrass wrote and directed the documentary-style feature film depicting the 1972 civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, in which 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead by British soldiers. Bloody Sunday won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Greengrass was named Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards.

Greengrass has written and directed television films concerned with social and political issues, including The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (winner of BAFTA's Best Single Drama Award in 2000 and the Special Jury Prize at the BANFF World Television Festival), as well as The Fix, The One That Got Away and Open Fire.

He produced and co-wrote the 2004 television film Omagh, set in the aftermath of the notorious Real IRA car-bombing that killed 29 people in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Omagh won BAFTA's Best Single Drama Award in 2005 and was named Best Irish Film at the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA) in 2004. Omagh was also nominated for the IFTA's Best Script award.

Greengrass spent the first decade of his career covering global conflict for the ITV current affairs program, World in Action. He has written and directed many documentaries, including the Live Aid documentary Food, Trucks and Rock and Roll. He is also an author and co-wrote the controversial bestseller “Spycatcher,” with Peter Wright, former assistant director of Britain's MI5.

Greengrass was born in Cheam, Surrey, England, and studied at Queen's College, Cambridge University.

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