Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle (; born January 19, 1985) is an American director, screenwriter and producer. Chazelle made his directorial debut with the musical film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009). He rose to prominence for writing and directing his second feature film, Whiplash (2014), which received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. His 2016 film La La Land was a critical and commercial success, winning all seven of its Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture - Musical or Comedy, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It also received a record-tying fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning six including Best Director, making Chazelle the youngest winner in both Best Director categories. 2Early life Chazelle was born in Providence, Rhode Island to a Roman Catholic family, the son of French-American father Bernard Chazelle, the Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University, and Canadian-American mother Celia, who teaches medieval history at The College of New Jersey. Chazelle was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Hebrew school for four years due to his parents' dissatisfaction with other local schools. Chazelle has a sister, Anna, who is an actress. Their maternal grandfather, John Martin, is the son of stage actress Eileen Earle and a father who worked for Paramount Pictures in London after World War I. Filmmaking was Chazelle's first love, but he subsequently wanted to be a musician, and struggled to make it as a jazz drummer at Princeton High School. He has said he had an intense music teacher, who was the inspiration for the character of Terence Fletcher in Chazelle's breakout film Whiplas