Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970) — also known as P.T. Anderson — is an American filmmaker. Interested in film-making at a young age, Anderson was encouraged by his father Ernie Anderson (a disc jockey, and television and radio announcer/voiceover artist) to become a filmmaker. Anderson is a distinctive filmmaker of his generation, praised as a wunderkind after the release of the dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

In 1993, he wrote and directed a short film titled Cigarettes & Coffee on a budget of $20,000. After he attended the Sundance Institute, Anderson had a deal with Rysher Entertainment to direct his first feature film, a neo-noir crime thriller entitled Hard Eight, in 1996. Anderson received critical and commercial success for his film Boogie Nights (1997), set during the Golden Age of Porn in the 1970s and 1980s. His third feature, Magnolia (1999), received wide acclaim despite struggling at the box office.

In 2002, the romantic comedy-drama Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson's fourth feature, was released to positive reviews. After a five-year absence, the epic drama There Will Be Blood was released to critical acclaim in 2007. It is Anderson's highest-grossing film to date and is considered by some critics to be one of the most important films of the 21st century. In 2012, Anderson's sixth film, the drama The Master, was released to critical acclaim. His seventh film, the crime comedy-drama Inherent Vice, based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Pynchon, was released in 2014, to general acclaim. Anderson has been nominated for six Academy Awards over the course of his career.