Cast Details

Newsletter SMS Alerts Version française Facebook Twitter SMS Mobile
Theatres FIND A MOVIE MOVIES AT HOME

Site Navigation

  1. Theatres
  2. Movies
  3. Events
  4. Buy Tickets
  5. Video
  6. Blog
  7. Contests
  8. Corporate Sales
  9. SCENE
  10. Buy/Rent Movies
  11. Gift Cards
 
Find Cast Members | Find Movies
Please enter a name.
# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Cast Archive: Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz
Birthday: February 28, 1921
Birth Place: Passaic, New Jersey, USA
Resides: United States
Professions: producer
Saul Zaentz has carved a niche in film with accomplished, often critically acclaimed adaptations of novels and plays. A child of immigrant parents, the New Jersey native had originally planned to open a chicken farm after his service in WWII, until he spent six weeks actually working on one. Instead, he migrated first to St Louis, where he took business courses, and eventually landed in San Francisco, where he secured work in the music industry. After moving up from distribution through packaging concert tours, Zaentz went to work at the San Francisco-based Fantasy records. Originally specializing in jazz and cabaret comics like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, Fantasy grew in the 60s thanks in part to Creedance Clearwater Revival.

With this success, and now based in Berkeley, Zaentz made an auspicious entry into feature film production with Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975). Starring Jack Nicholson and based on Ken Kesey's underground classic, the film became one of the biggest--and unlikeliest--critical and commercial smashes of the day, becoming the second picture to earn Oscars in the top five categories, including one for Best Picture Oscar for Zaentz and co-producer Michael Douglas.

Zaentz's subsequent efforts, often literary adaptations, have been infrequent, but usually been worth the wait. A reteaming with director Forman in 1984 on "Amadeus", based on Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, yielded a second Best Picture Oscar. Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), featured Strong central performances from Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche and introduced Lena Olin to American audiences. He stumbled with the adaptation of At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991), directed by Hector Babenco. While the film has much to admire, its length and subject left audiences cold and resulted in a loss of some $20 million, a costly one for the producer. Zaentz, however, rebounded with Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), a stirring epic with stunning visuals and brilliant performances, adapted from Michael Ondaajte's novel. The film earned 12 Oscar nomination and won a total of nine, including Best Picture. For his overall efforts, Zaentz was also selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive the 1996 Irving G Thalberg Award.

In the early 80s, he founded the Saul Zaentz Company Film Center, a post-production sound facility, that has become a valuable resource for the northern California filmmaking community.

My Favourites

My Favourite Theatres

My Favourite Movies

Latest From the Blog

Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2: 3 new character posters
Efron leaves his comfort zone in The Paperboy
Brad Pitt, the effortless mega movie star
Young Hollywood stars strike out on own at Cannes
More...

What's Hot


The Great Gatsby

Anchorman 2



The Hobbit

Browse By Category

About us

Cineplex Inc. ("Cineplex") is the largest motion picture exhibitor in Canada and owns, leases or has a joint-venture interest in 130 theatres with 1,359 screens serving approximately 70 million guests annually. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Cineplex operates theatres from British Columbia to Quebec and is the exclusive provider of UltraAVX™ and the largest exhibitor of digital, 3D and IMAX projection technologies in the country. Proudly Canadian and with a workforce of approximately 10,000 employees, the company operates the following top tier brands: Cineplex Odeon, Galaxy, Famous Players, Colossus, Coliseum, SilverCity, Cinema City and Scotiabank Theatres. Cineplex shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol "CGX".