Stanley Kubrick – Bio, Wife, Daughter, Wiki, Death, Net Worth

Quick Facts

The cinematic history of America is incomplete without the mention of legendary filmmaker, director, and producer, Stanley Kubrick. In a career that sustained form 1951 to his death in 1999, he has come to be recognized as one of the most influential filmmakers ever to have lived with works across genres. He is recognized for many exceptional works including The Killing and many others that changed a thing or more about cinematography as it is today.

Stanley Kubrick Biography

Sometime on July 26, 1928, at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, Stanley Kubrick was born to Jacob Leonard Kubrick (Jack) who was a doctor and Sadie Gertrude Kubrick. Of Austrian-Jewish, Romanian-Jewish, and Polish-Jewish descent, the filmmaker was raised as the older of two children with Barbara Kubrick as his younger sister.

It was in Public School 3 in the Bronx that he started his education before later moving to Public School 90. He would later graduate in 1945 from the William Howard Taft High School with very poor grades and little hopes of going any farther with his education.

Although he was adjudged to have more than an average IQ level, he had almost always recorded poor attendance in school which was what contributed to his disappointing grades. Much later, he would reveal that he had always hated the American educational system because of how much he believed it came short in stimulating critical thinking as well as the interest of students.

Stanley Kubrick had always had an interest in becoming a filmmaker. On his thirteenth birthday, his father gifted him a camera, something that made him fall in love with photography and saw him become his school’s official photographer when he was still in high school. After his education, he worked for some time as a photographer while also making some money playing chess.

In 1951, he started producing short films and documentaries with the help and encouragement of his friend, Alexander Singer. Teaching himself production, he made a documentary titled Day of the Fight, it was about the Irish-American middleweight boxer, Walter Cartier. This brought him to the limelight, launching his career.

With many more short films and feature works to his name, he later met producer James B. Harris, with whom he found Harris-Kubrick Pictures Corporation in 1955. In the years that followed, he would adapt many novels into movies including Lionel White’s novel Clean Break which he made into the 1956 movie, The Killing.

In 1968, he released 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film Stanley Kubrick spent five years to develop. The cinematic groundbreaking film is seen as one of the greatest films ever made. The 1970s and 80s saw him working on various horror films including The Exorcist (1973) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

Back in 1961, he left the States for the UK where he continued to work as a result of his disdain for Hollywood, his concerns about crime in America, as well as interference in movie production.

Wife and Daughter

Stanley Kubrick became a family man when he was only 19. At the age, he got married to Toba Metz, a woman he met when he was in high school. Unfortunately, by 1951, only three years later, the marriage came to an end in a divorce. The next year, he started living with Ruth Sobotka – a dancer, theatrical designer, and actress who later became his wife in 1955.

The marriage was not to be forever as the two would end the union two years after they tied the knot and then Kubrick would meet German actress Christiane Harlan. She became his third wife in 1958, and they remained together until his death in 1999.

Harlan had a daughter from a previous relationship, but together, they had two daughters – Anya Renata and Vivian Vanessa. His first daughter was born in 1959 and she lived until 2009 when she died while the second, Vivian, was born in 1960. She is also a filmmaker like her father and a composer.

Stanley Kubrick’s Networth

Stanley Kubrick had a net worth that was estimated at $20 million. He made his fortune from his highly successful career as a filmmaker. As pointed out, he was also a photographer and voice actor, all of which added to his fortune.

His Death

On March 7, 1999, the iconic filmmaker died in his sleep at the age of 70. The death was caused by a heart attack he suffered. Five days after the tragedy, Stanley Kubrick was laid to rest at Childwickbury Manor, his home estate. The funeral was a private event with only close to a hundred family and close friends in attendance.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.