Who Is Bruno Delbonnel? Wiki, Cinematographer, Net Worth, 'Harry Potter' & Facts To Know

Bruno Delbonnel was born in 1957. He is a French cinematographer, screenwriter and director. Delbonnel was born in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France and he graduated in 1978 from ESEC which is in Paris, Ile-de-France. Delbonnel collaborated twice with friend and colleague French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet for the film, 'Amelie' and 'A Very Long Engagement'. Delbonnel has been the director of photography for his film, 'Across the Universe' released in 2007 and for the fantasy-adventure film, 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' released in 2009. Delbonnel has also worked on Tim Burton's films, 'Dark Shadows' in 2012 and 'Big Eyes' in 2014. He has worked with the Coen Brothers on their 2013 film, 'Inside Llewyn Davis'. 'Dark Shadows' was an American horror comedy film based on gothic television soap opera of the same name. 'Big Eyes' was about the life of American artist Margaret Keane—famous for drawing portraits and paintings with big eyes. The cinematographer par excellence has been nominated five times for Oscar Awards for the films, 'A Very Long Engagement', 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', 'Inside Llewyn Davis', 'Amelie' and 'Darkest Hour'. Bruno Delbonnel has a very unique style of featuring very stylized color palettes which are often very warm and feature yellows and greens as ubiquitous and prominent colors which often tint the whole image. Also often in his work, the film stock used has a very apparent, well-defined grain structure.

The net worth of Bruno Delbonnel is $9 million.

Bruno Delbonnel is ranked amongst the most talented and distinct cinematographers today. He sparked interest with his first film, 'Amelie' and then continued to render films like, A Very Long Engagement, Across the Universe, and Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, Big Eyes, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. His collaboration with the Coen Brothers led to the making of brilliant films like, 'Inside Llewyn Davis'. Recently, Delbonel along with filmmaker Joe Wright came up with a very unlikely choice of project, i.e. a drama about Winston Churchill. Their conjuring resulted in 'Darkest Hour' which stands today as one of the best films of the year. It has Delbonnel's cinematic brilliance and Dario Marianelli's pulsating score rendering the film an absolute must to watch. Delbonnel was recently interviewed about this film to know his opinions, thought process, efforts and the challenges faced during filming this documentary. When asked about how his courtship with Joe went along, as this was the first project they did together, Delbonnel replied, "In fact Joe called me three or four years ago when he was prepping Pan. Seamus McGarvey was not available and so he asked me if I could shoot it for him but I was working with Tim Burton on Miss Peregrine. So I couldn’t do it and then he called me for this one, he said Seamus is not available again so would you mind shooting it, and I read the script and I said yeah, okay. Why not?" The interviewer asked Delbonnel about what were his early discussions with Joe about the visual approach to the project, to which Delbonnel said, "I think the first thing was in some ways he had to convince me to do this movie. It was a lot about people talking about the politics of England and how to save the world in some ways, and so Joe came to Paris and he told me that what really interested him was the double personality of Churchill. How this guy had a lot of doubt and was a leader as well but with a lot of failure behind it. So it suddenly opened a lot of things for me like, ‘Okay, so it’s more about a person than the moment in the world history.’ Then I got interested. Then we start talking about maps and how those people are playing with soldiers and human life and looking at the world from God’s point of view somewhat, and this spoke to me as well. So it was an early conversation we had, and then we kind of developed a general concept of what the movie could look like." The interviewer also asked Delbonnel on how he managed to create the perfect balance between the reel-screen character like Winston Churchill and a performance as spectacular as Gary's, to which Delbonnel replied, "To tell you the truth I don’t think about this. That’s the problem with any biopic you’re doing, but we’re not doing a biopic. I don’t feel this movie is a biopic. It’s just like, two months in the life of Winston Churchill. So I don’t know what’s before, I don’t know what’s next. What is interesting for me is only those two months, which are within the script and it could be anyone, in some ways. This guy was larger than life like you said but you could say that Joey’s larger than life. You have this double personality or triple personality and that’s what is interesting, is when you try to play with them. So what was more complicated was shooting Gary Oldman as Churchill. That was the challenge and because even, you have to have in mind that the audience is looking at Gary Oldman being Winston Churchill so you have to help Gary to make the audience forget about it and that’s my job in some way. The question is how can I find a way just to cause the audience to forget that it’s Gary Oldman with prosthetics? It’s not about Churchill." The interview went on for quite some time in which Delbonnel answered all sort of questions about filming the documentary and about his collaboration with Joe. The film we have as a result is a masterpiece and is rightfully nominated for an Academy.

Bruno Delbonnel has been nominated for Oscar 2018 for Best Cinematography for the film, 'Darkest Hour'. Oscar 2018 will be held on March 4, 2018.