Edward Norton

Edward Harrison Norton (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor.

Norton was drawn to theatrical productions at local venues as a child.

Edward Harrison Norton was born into a progressive Episcopalian family in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 18, 1969.

In 1984, Norton won the acting cup at Pasquaney, an annual summer camp for boys in Hebron, New Hampshire, where he later returned as a theater director.

He subsequently immersed himself in films, naming Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro as two of his early inspirations because "the ones [he] liked were also the ones who made [him] think [he] could do it because they weren't the most handsome guys".

He graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1987.

He attended Yale College, where he earned a BA in History.

While there, he also studied Japanese, acted in university productions, and was a competitive rower.

After graduating from Yale College in 1991 with a degree in history, he worked for a few months in Japan before moving to Manhattan to pursue an acting career.

After graduating from Yale in 1991, conversant in Japanese, Norton worked not-for-profit as a representative for his grandfather's company, Enterprise Community Partners, in Osaka, Japan.

After five months in Japan, Norton moved to New York City, where he supported himself working odd jobs.

He took six months researching different acting techniques, focusing on method acting.

He later took lessons from acting coach Terry Schreiber after discovering he was looking for a Japanese translator to help direct a play in Tokyo.

Norton described him as a great teacher who encouraged students to become "multilingual actors" with different techniques for versatile roles.

He is descended from John Norton, a Bristol (UK) Victorian architect designing mainly Churches and Tyntesfield Estate (The Architect, May 1994).

He was raised in Columbia, Maryland.

His father, Edward Mower Norton Jr., served in Vietnam as a Marine lieutenant before becoming an environmental lawyer and conservation advocate working in Asia and a federal prosecutor in the Carter administration.

He gained immediate recognition and critical acclaim for his debut in Primal Fear (1996), which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

His mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" Rouse, was an English teacher who died of a brain tumor in 1997.

Norton's maternal grandfather, James Rouse, was the founder of real-estate developer The Rouse Company and co-founder of the real estate corporation Enterprise Community Partners.

He has two younger siblings, Molly and James.

At age five, Norton and his parents saw a musical related to Cinderella at the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts (CCTA), starring his babysitter, which ignited his interest in the theater.

He enjoyed watching films with his father as a pre-teen, but later reflected that he was fascinated with the cinematography rather than the acting.

Norton recalled that it was theater and not films that inspired him to act.

He made his professional debut at the age of eight in the musical Annie Get Your Gun at his hometown's Toby's Dinner Theatre.

At the CCTA, he acted in several theatrical productions directed by Toby Orenstein.

His role as a redeemed neo-Nazi in American History X (1998) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

He also starred in the film Fight Club (1999), which garnered a cult following.

He continued to receive critical acclaim for his acting roles in films such as The Score (2001), 25th Hour (2002), The Italian Job (2003), The Illusionist (2006), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

His biggest commercial successes have been Red Dragon (2002), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Incredible Hulk (2008), and The Bourne Legacy (2012).

Norton established the production company Class 5 Films in 2003, and was director or producer of the films Keeping the Faith (2000), Down in the Valley (2005), and The Painted Veil (2006).

For his role in the black comedy Birdman (2014), Norton earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Norton has since directed and acted in the crime film Motherless Brooklyn (2019), and starred in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

Despite critical plaudits, Norton has gained notoriety for being difficult to work with, including incidents such as editing the final cuts and rewriting screenplays against the will of other producers.

He is discreet about his personal life and has expressed no interest in being a celebrity.

Besides acting and filmmaking, he is an environmental activist and social entrepreneur.

He is a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization that advocates for affordable housing, and serves as president of the American branch of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.

He is also the UN Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity.

He is married to Canadian film producer Shauna Robertson, with whom he has a son.

In March 2022, on the day of another sentencing of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny, Norton became the first celebrity sponsor of the international Anti-Corruption Foundation.