Cameron Crowe Biography

Considered an idiosyncratic writer by many, Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American writer and film director who worked as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone Magazine before moving into the film industry. He has made a reputation for himself as a creator of character-driven, personal films.Crowe was born on July 13, 1957, in Palm Springs, California, to a father who owned a real estate and phone-service business, and an activist/teacher mother who worked as a psychology professor and family therapist and regularly participated in peace demonstrations.He moved around often with his parents and two older sisters (one who died while he was young) before the family settled down in San Diego, California. Crowe was a talented, intelligent child who skipped kindergarten and two grades in elementary school. By the time he started to attend the University of San Diego High School, he was much younger than most of his student peers.Because of his young age and possibly because of his ill health (He suffered from an inflammation of the kidney called nephritis.), Crowe was what most would call a loner. To keep himself busy and make up for his lack of social contacts, Crowe began writing for his school paper when he was thirteen. He also started writing music reviews for an underground publication called the San Diego Door.In 1972 when Crowe graduated from high school at only fifteen years old, he took a trip to Los Angeles where he met Ben Fong-Torres, the editor of Rolling Stone Magazine. Fong-Torres hired Crowe and Crowe became the youngest contributor ever to write for Rolling Stone.As the youngest writer of the magazine, Crowe liked a lot of groups that the older editors didn t. He especially enjoyed 1970s hard rock bands and singers such as Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, King Crimson, and Peter Frampton. So he was sent by the magazine to interview these bands, even bands who made it known that they hated Rolling Stone.In the late 1970s Crowe quit working as a staff writer for Rolling Stone and decided to pursue acting. He landed a bit part as a delivery boy in the 1978 historical drama American Hot Wax. But writing was in his blood so he returned to Rolling Stone as a freelance writer.In 1982, Crowe published a book called Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, about his experiences as fictional high school student Dave Cameron. Publishing house Simon Schuster gave him a contract for the book and a film was later made on the book which ended up launching the careers of then unknown actors Nicolas Cage and Sean Penn.Crowe wrote The Wild Life, the sequel to Fast Times in 1984. The film was unsuccessful, but Crowe followed this bomb with the much more successful romance, Say Anything, in 1989 with John Cusack. Say Anything was the first movie he wrote and directed.In 1996 he wrote and directed Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. The success of the movie made one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood . He followed that with writing and directing the movie Almost Famous in 2000 with Billy Crudup, Anna Paquin, Kate Hudson, and Jason Lee. Although the movie was nominated for and won a host of film awards, its box office sales were dismal.Box office sales for Crowe's next movie were also poor. In 2001 he wrote and directed Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, but the movie didn t get the same critical respect his other movies did.In 2005 Crowe wrote and directed the romantic drama, Elizabethtown, with a star studded cast including Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, and Jessica Biel.Crowe is married to Nancy Wilson and the couple have two children.