Name: Alejandro Amenábar
Date of Birth: 31 March 1972
His favorite directors are Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick.
Abre los ojos (1997) is his "remake" of Vertigo (1958), by Hitchcock. In fact, when the character of Sofia appears after hitting Cesar with a jar, it's the same shot of Kim Novak in Vertigo when she appears from the bathroom in the hotel - with green lights
He's a great collector of soundtracks.
He didn't finish his university studies due to one 4th grade subject, "Film writing". The last name of the professor who kept failing him is Castro, and that also the last name of the evil professor in his first long movie, Tesis (1996). Amen?bar claims he used the last name inadvertedly at first, it was the university people who noticed the coincidence and asked him to change it. In the end he decided not to, although in the scripts he did write a different name, G?lvez. Incidentally, he has done the script writing in all of his movies so far.
... His name appears in Tesis (1996), on a computer screen. When the main character checks the names of the buyers of the cameras, Amen?bar is one of them.
Invited to join AMPAS in 2005.
After his film Mar adentro (2004/I), he received a congratulation's letter from Steven Spielberg, one of Amenabar's favorites directors.
Composes the music for all his movies. Is a self-taught composer who learned to write music using a computer software.
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