22 amazing facts about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu! (List)

You can read them in the following list: 1. He is a Mexican film director.

2. Born on August 15, 1963, in Mexico City, Mexico, Alejandro González Iñárritu was the youngest child of seven siblings and grew up in the area of Narvarte.

3. He spent four years as the host for one of the top radio stations in his hometown of Mexico City, WFM.

4. Then in 1988, he was promoted to director of the station, a position he held for five years.

5. Having a predilection for literature and music but not able to focus on his studies, Iñárritu was ousted from school in his teens.

6. His 2006 film Babel was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.

7. He eventually became a commercial sailor before later attending Iberoamericana University.

8. Able to explore his love for music professionally, he worked as a DJ for Mexico’s WFM station in the 1980s, where he also created on-air skits and characters between playlists. He opted to go into visual work as well, working as a television producer and directing promotional spots.

9. He had two children, a son and a daughter, with wife Maria Eladia Hagerman de Gonzalez.

10. In 1991 he founded his own production company, Zeta Films, through which he created high-profile commercials and shorts.

11. He directed Academy Award winning actor Javier Bardem in the 2010 film Biutiful.

12. Iñárritu would ultimately turn to long-form film as his creative vehicle of choice, seguing into it by creating musical scores for several Mexican movies in the 1980s.

13. He studied the craft of filmmaking and lived for a time in the U.S. before working with novelist Guillermo Arriaga on a feature of their own.

14. With Arriaga serving as screenwriter, Iñárritu directed the 2000 work Amores Perros, a harrowing, depth-driven drama about interconnected lives of pain and loss in Mexico City. Perros, which marked the feature film debut of actor Gael García Bernal, won global raves and earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film.

15. Iñárritu continued his collaboration with Arriaga on his next two films, which ultimately rounded out a loose trilogy. Themes of interconnectedness and tragedy surfaced again in the 2003 work 21 Grams, which starred Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn.

16. The riveting Babel, offering up characters with intersecting stories on an international level, continued to cement Iñárritu’s reputation as a no-holds-barred filmmaker comfortable with exploring desperate circumstances. The ensemble cast featured Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, among others, and the film received seven Oscar nominations that included best picture and best director.

17. The riveting Babel, offering up characters with intersecting stories on an international level, continued to cement Iñárritu’s reputation as a no-holds-barred filmmaker comfortable with exploring desperate circumstances. The ensemble cast featured Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, among others, and the film received seven Oscar nominations that included best picture and best director.

18. More existential explorations followed with 2014’s Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which Iñárritu again directed and co-wrote. The film chronicles the harried tribulations of actor Riggan Thomson (played by Michael Keaton, in a comeback role), the former star of an empty super-hero franchise who’s trying to create a different type of legacy by starring in a Broadway stage production.

19. Iñárritu and his collaborators earned a Golden Globe for best screenplay, and the film received nine Academy Award nominations, going on to win for best picture. Iñárritu himself won for best director and original screenplay along with his co-writers, using his time onstage to also shout out his heritage and call for fair treatment of Mexican immigrants in the U.S.

20. Iñárritu stirred up buzz again in 2015 with his adaptation of Michael Punke’s novel The Revenant. Featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass, the film was difficult to shoot due to frigid weather but has garnered major interest among the public and critics.

21. The Revenant was widely released in the U.S. during the second weekend of January, earning more than $39 million. That same weekend DiCaprio, Iñárritu and the film itself won Golden Globes in the categories of best actor, director and drama, respectively, with the filmmaker heaping great praise upon his lead star.

22. The Revenant received a whopping 12 Oscar nominations, including nods for cinematography, directing and best picture.