Robert Altman

February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006

Robert Altman was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.

Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the son of Helen a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler who came from an upper-class family.

In 1969 Altman was offered the script for MASH, an adaptation of a little-known Korean War-era novel satirizing life in the armed services, which had already been passed over by over a dozen other filmmakers. Altman agreed to direct the project, and though production was so tumultuous that stars Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland even attempted to have Altman fired over his unorthodox filming methods, MASH was widely hailed as an immediate classic upon its 1970 release. It won the Grand Prix for the Best Film at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival and netted six Academy Award nominations. It was also Altman's highest grossing film. Now recognized as a major talent, Altman's career took firm hold with the success of MASH, and he followed it with other critical breakthroughs such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville (1975), which made the distinctive, experimental "Altman style" well known.

Altman died at the age of 81 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. According to his production company in New York, Sandcastle 5 Productions, he died of complications from leukemia.