Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick (born November 30 1943, Waco, Texas) is an enigmatic American film director and screenwriter. His reputation as a filmmaker rests on three pictures: Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. Badlands and Days of Heaven are considered modern masterpieces of cinematography (Martin Scorsese once commenting that any frame of Days of Heaven could be blown up and hung on the wall).

Terrence Malick grew up on a farm and worked as a farmhand before studying philosophy at Harvard. After graduating he went to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar but left before finishing his thesis (on Martin Heidegger) after a disagreement with his advisor. He moved back to the United States and taught philosophy at MIT while freelancing as a journalist.