Walter Hill facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Walter Hill
Hill in 2014
Born	(1940-01-10) January 10, 1940 (age 85) Long Beach, California, U.S.
Education	Michigan State University (BA)
Occupation	Film director screenwriter film producer
Years active	1968–present
Spouse(s)	Hildy Gottlieb ​ (m. 1986)​
Children	2

Walter Hill (born January 10, 1940) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is famous for his action movies and for bringing back the Western genre. Some of his well-known films include The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs., Streets of Fire, and Red Heat. He also wrote the script for the crime movie The Getaway. Walter Hill has directed episodes for TV shows like Tales from the Crypt and Deadwood. He also produced movies in the Alien series. He once said that "every film I've done has been a Western."

Early Life and First Steps

Walter Hill was born in Long Beach, California. He was the younger of two sons. His family came from Tennessee and Mississippi. As a child, Walter had asthma, which meant he missed several years of school.

He loved movies from a young age. He especially liked adventure films and Westerns. When he was 15, his asthma got better, and he started thinking about becoming a writer. He worked in oil fields during high school and college. He also studied art in Mexico.

Later, he studied history at Michigan State University. He admired writer Ernest Hemingway and wanted to write clearly and simply. After college, he was going to join the army, but his childhood asthma made him ineligible. This made him think seriously about his career. He got a job researching historical documentaries, which led him to see more scripts and want to direct.

Starting in Movies: Assistant Director

Walter Hill started working in the mail room at Universal Studios. Then, he joined a training program for the Directors Guild of America. This allowed him to work on TV shows as an apprentice. He learned by watching and working on shows like Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, and Bonanza.

He became a second assistant director on movies like The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Bullitt. His job on Bullitt was to make sure the background was set up safely during car chases. He also worked on Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run. However, Walter Hill didn't want to be an assistant director for long. He wanted to make his own films.

Becoming a Screenwriter

While working as an assistant director, Walter Hill spent his nights and weekends writing movie scripts. He realized he could write scripts as good as the ones being made. It took him several years to finish his first script.

His first completed script was a Western called Lloyd Williams and His Brother. It was never made, but it impressed Warner Bros. They asked him to pitch new ideas. He suggested a detective story called Hickey & Boggs. Warner Bros liked it and hired him to rewrite The Thief Who Came to Dinner.

A film editor named Polly Platt read his Hickey & Boggs script. She suggested he help write The Getaway, which was going to star Steve McQueen. Walter Hill worked on the script with director Sam Peckinpah. The movie was a big hit! This success helped Walter Hill get a chance to direct his own films. He also wrote scripts for two Paul Newman films, The Mackintosh Man and The Drowning Pool.

Walter Hill also started his own company, Brandywine Productions, with David Giler and Gordon Carroll. They got a script called Alien. Walter Hill helped rewrite it but chose not to direct it. Alien became a huge success.

Directing His Own Films

The 1970s: First Directing Chances

By the early 1970s, Walter Hill really wanted to direct. He met producer Lawrence Gordon in 1973. Gordon agreed to let Hill direct a film if he wrote the script for it. This led to Hill's first movie as a director, Hard Times (1975). It was filmed in New Orleans in just 38 days. The movie starred James Coburn and Charles Bronson.

For his scripts, Hill was inspired by other writers to use a "Haiku style." This meant his stage directions and dialogue were very short and simple. He used this style for Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, and his uncredited work on Alien.

His second film as a director was The Driver (1978), starring Ryan O'Neal. The characters in this movie don't have names, only titles like "The Driver" or "The Detective." The Driver didn't do well in the United States, but it was liked overseas.

Next, Walter Hill directed The Warriors (1979). This movie became very popular. When it was released, there were some problems with violence near theaters. Paramount, the studio, even removed ads for the film. But the movie was a big hit and got great reviews.

The 1980s: Hits and New Styles

Walter Hill directed his first Western, The Long Riders (1980). This film is special because it cast real-life acting brothers as the famous outlaw brothers (like the James and Younger gangs).

His next film was Southern Comfort. It was a thriller about U.S. Army National Guardsmen fighting for survival in the Louisiana swamps. Critics liked it, but it didn't make much money.

Then came 48 Hrs. (1982), which was a huge box office success. It starred Nick Nolte and a new comedian, Eddie Murphy. This movie helped Walter Hill get funding for his next film, Streets of Fire (1984). This movie was a "rock 'n' roll fable" and became more popular years after its release.

Walter Hill also directed Brewster's Millions (1985), his first full comedy. He made this film to help his career and finances. He also co-wrote and produced Blue City (1986).

He returned to action films with Extreme Prejudice (1987), a modern Western. He also directed Red Heat (1988), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Soviet cop and Jim Belushi as an American cop. This film was profitable.

In the late 1980s, Walter Hill also worked as an executive producer and directed episodes for the horror TV series Tales from the Crypt. He ended the decade with Johnny Handsome (1989), starring Mickey Rourke.

The 1990s: Sequels and Westerns

In the 1990s, Walter Hill directed his only sequel, Another 48 Hrs. (1990), with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. This film became the highest-grossing movie he directed.

He also co-wrote and produced Alien 3 (1992). Then he directed Trespass, a film about firemen and criminals.

Walter Hill directed the Western Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). He also wrote and directed another Western, Wild Bill (1995). These films did not have much success.

In 1996, he directed Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis. This movie was a Western-style update of the Japanese film Yojimbo. He also produced another TV anthology series, Perversions of Science (1997).

The 2000s and Beyond

In 2000, Walter Hill directed Supernova. However, he disagreed with the studio's changes to the film and used a different name, "Thomas Lee," for his credit.

In 2002, he directed the prison boxing film Undisputed. He also worked on the pilot episode for the HBO Western TV series Deadwood in 2004. His work on Deadwood earned him an Emmy Award.

In 2006, he directed the miniseries Broken Trail, which became a very popular film for a cable network. He won another award for Broken Trail.

In the 2010s, Walter Hill described himself as "semi-retired." However, Sylvester Stallone asked him to direct Bullet to the Head (2012). In 2016, his movie The Assignment was released.

In 2019, at age 77, Walter Hill released a spoken word record called The Cowboy Iliad: A Legend Told In The Spoken Word. It tells the story of a shootout in Kansas in 1871.

In August 2021, he began filming the Western Dead for a Dollar, which premiered in 2022. Walter Hill received an award at the Venice Film Festival for his filmmaking. He plans to direct more films, including a "film noir" project.

Personal Life

Walter Hill married Hildy Gottlieb, a talent agent, on September 7, 1986. They have two daughters, Joanna and Miranda.

Filmography

Film

Producer only

• Rustlers' Rhapsody (1985)
• Demon Knight (1995)
• W.E.I.R.D. World (1995)
• Alien Resurrection (1997)
• Ritual (2002)
• Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
• Prometheus (2012)
• Alien: Covenant (2017)
• Alien: Romulus (2024)

Television

Awards and Nominations

Walter Hill has won several awards for his work. The Writers Guild of America West gave him the 2024 Laurel Award for his screenwriting achievements.

Images for kids

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  Walter Hill in 2014

See also

In Spanish: Walter Hill para niños