Robert Richardson

Biography

Robert Richardson has won three Academy Awards and earned seven Academy Award nominations for his cinematography. His work on director Oliver Stone's JFK earned him his first Oscar. 

His second and third came with The Aviator and Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese. These two films also garnered him BAFTA nominations for Best Cinematographer.

Prior to regularly collaborating with well-known directors like Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino, Richardson served an apprenticeship shooting the second unit of Repo Man while filming television documentaries for PBS and the BBC. 

His work in television led Stone to hire Richardson to shoot both Salvador and Platoon. From there, he worked almost exclusively with Stone, filming Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, and The Doors, while occasionally branching out to shoot films like John Sayles' Eight Men Out and City of Hope.

Richardson also shot Stone's Natural Born Killers, Nixon, and U-Turn. He then began collaborating with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Scorsese chose him as DP on 1999's Bringing Out the Dead, while Tarantino snapped him up for Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Kill Bill, Vol. 2.

Richardson continued to make his mark as Tarantino's DP on 2012's Django Unchained and 2015's The Hateful Eight, as well as on Ben Affleck's 2016 film Live By Night. 

He shot Director Andy Serkis's 2017 Breathe starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy; 2018's Adrift for Director Balthasar Kormakur starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin for STX, and 2018's A Private War for Director Matthew Heineman starring Rosamund Pike. 

Richardson then shot Tarantino's 2020 hit Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, and 2021's Venom 2 for Sony/Director Andy Serkis.

Recent credits include 2022's Emancipation Again with Fuqua for Apple Studios, 2023's Air directed by Ben Affleck for Amazon Studios, and The Equalizer 3 for Director Antoine Fuqua and for Columbia Pictures.

The Hateful Eight (2015) is the first film shot in anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70mm since Khartoum (1966).

Was the original cinematographer of World War Z (2013) but, due to the time-consuming troubled production of the film and the several re-shoots, Richardson had to leave the set early to work on Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). He was replaced by Ben Seresin, who received the whole credit.

Member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) since 1992.

M.F.A. - American Film Institute Class of 1979.

As of 2017, he contributed to the cinematography of eight films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), JFK (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), The Aviator (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Hugo (2011), Django Unchained (2012). 

Of those, Platoon (1986) is a winner in the category. Richardson's Oscars were for his work on JFK (1991), The Aviator (2004), and Hugo (2011).

He was due to have been a cinematographer on The Double, an adaptation of the Fyodor Dostoevsky novella, to have been directed by Roman Polanski from a script by Jeremy Leven.

Just days before shooting was due to begin in Paris in June 1996, lead actor John Travolta left the set following creative differences with Polanski and the project collapsed shortly afterward.

Born on exactly the same date as Diana Scarwid (of "Mommie Dearest" fame).