Richard Donner was born into a Jewish family in the New York Bronx as Richard Donald Schwartzberg. His father had a furniture company.
After graduating from New York University, he began directing series and television films that were less successful. But then came 1976 and Satan is coming! who became a blockbuster and one of the most successful horror movies of all time. Two years later, he filmed the comic book Superman with Christopher Reev in the lead role and was another hit in the world.
Donner became a guarantee of success in Hollywood, which he confirmed with the film Roštáci. And in 1987, Deadly Weapon followed, the first in a series of four action comedies with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover (the last to theaters 11 years later). Their success was phenomenal and Lethal Weapon became a classic of the action genre.
Richard Donner directed until 2006, when he was 76, but none of the other films (Maverick, Assassins, Conspiracy) surpassed this success. Together with his wife Lauren, he owned a production company, the most famous of which was the X-Men series.
In 2000, Donner received the President’s Award of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
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