David O. Russell

David O. Russell (birthname: David Owen Russell) is the maker of mainly dark-tinged, ensemble comedies that allow his actors to run the gamut from subtle shadings to farce. Although none of Russell’s films comprise large physical productions, he tends to take considerable time as a writer-director-producer making his films, making only ten features in 28 years, starting in 1994 with Spanking the Monkey, an ultra-dark comedy starring Jeremy Davies, Alberta Watson, and Carla Gallo, successfully launching Russell’s career with Sundance’s audience award and the best first screenplay award at the Indie Spirit Awards.

David O. Russell got into the Miramax business with his follow-up feature, the black comedy Flirting with Disaster (1996), with the starry cast of Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Téa Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin, and Richard Jenkins, and premiering out of competition at the Cannes film festival. Taking a major shift from relationship comedies, Russell took on the Iraq War with the caustic and energetic heist comedy-drama, Three Kings (1999), starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Nora Dunn, and Mykelti Williamson, and earning nearly $108 million box office globally.

David O. Russell added producer to his job titles (and partnering with producer Scott Rudin) for his fourth feature, a return to the domestic black comedy vein with I Heart Huckabees (2004), with a characteristically sprawling ensemble including Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, and Naomi Watts. Although he didn’t write the script, Russell gained an enhanced profile as a director with The Fighter (2010), a charged boxing film starring Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo, with Bale and Leo both winning supporting actor Oscars, a rare feat, and two of seven Oscar nominations, including a Best Director nomination for Russell.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) marked Russell’s first produced screenplay in eight years, a somewhat less-black comedy-drama pairing the winning combination of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, surrounded by an ensemble including Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, and Julia Stiles. A Russell-directed film once again scored at the Oscars, with eight nominations, including another nomination for Russell as well as nominations in all four acting categories—the first movie to pull this off since Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981). The movie added to this triumph with a strong global box office return of $236 million.

Russell worked uncharacteristically quickly to make the delicious ensemble comedy about the FBI’s Abscam investigation in the ‘70s and ‘80s, American Hustle (2013), reuniting Cooper and Lawrence, with an ensemble including Bale, Adams, and Jeremy Renner. For the second consecutive year, a David O. Russell film dazzled the Oscars, with ten nominations (including director and screenplay nods for Russell, and once again, nominations in all four acting categories), but, surprisingly, no wins—one of only five movies to be nominated for ten or more Oscars to go winless.

After the release of a strange and barely noticed rom-com titled Accidental Love (shot mostly in 2008, then completed before its 2015 release)–which David O. Russell began filming until production funding issues stopped production, leading to Russell’s departure—Russell’s next film as director-writer-producer was Joy (2015), a vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for the best actress Oscar and won the best actress Globe, and co-starring Cooper (marking Lawrence’s and Cooper’s third consecutive movie under Russell’s direction), Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, and Isabella Rossellini.

Seven years passed until Russell’s next film, Amsterdam (2022) marking a genre departure (mystery comedy) and a mostly fresh lineup of actors, though led by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Robinson, with a large supporting ensemble including Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek, and De Niro.