Terry Gilliam Biography
Terry Gilliam (1940 - ), born Terrence Vance Gilliam in Minneapolis, is a naturalized British actor, director, screenwriter and film producer (he renounced his US citizenship in January 2006). His family lived on the rural outskirts of the city until 1951, when they moved to California. After graduating with a degree in Physics in 1962, Gilliam left Los Angeles for New York, securing a job as an assistant editor on Harvey Kurtzman's magazine, Help. A spell in advertising and as a freelance illustrator followed, but the turning point came in 1967, when Gilliam moved to London and was introduced to television producers. After collaborating on sketches and animation pieces for a series of comedy shows, in 1969 he joined Monty Python's Flying Circus, the innovative BBC series characterized by subversive and surreal humour. The next breakthrough came when Python made the leap to the big screen, with Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974) giving Gilliam his first film director role. Numerous other films followed, including Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King (Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival), Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Brothers Grimm , Tideland and The Imaginary of Doctor Parnassus. His latest feature film, Zero Theorem, was presented in the official selection at the Venice Film Festival in 2013. An open hostility towards the studio system accompanied Gilliam's criticism of mainstream American culture, continuing to denounce Hollywood as complicit in ' lie lived by American society.
