Chris Columbus (filmmaker)

Early life

Columbus was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania and raised in Champion, Ohio, the son of Mary Irene (née Puskar), a factory worker, and Alex Michael Columbus, an aluminum plant worker and coal miner.

Columbus is of Italian and Czech descent. He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio and went on to study at New York University's film school at the Tisch School of the Arts, where he was a schoolmate of writer/director Charlie Kaufman and Alec Baldwin.

Although he received a scholarship, he forgot to renew it and was forced to take a factory job to pay for schooling.While on shifts he secretly worked on a 20-page screenplay, which one of his teachers would later use to help him get an agent. Columbus would later state the experience "saved my life" noting that he was able to experience "the terrifying reality I faced of having to live and work in that factory for the rest of my life in that town if I didn't make it".

Career

Columbus worked as a screenwriter with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, working on Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). He wrote the first episodes of the animated series Galaxy High (1986) and later made his directorial debut with the teen comedy Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Heartbreak Hotel (1988).

His directorial work includes Home Alone (1990), Only the Lonely (1991), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Nine Months (1995), Stepmom (1998), Bicentennial Man (1999), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Rent (2005), I Love You Beth Cooper (2009), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) and most recently Pixels (2015)

He was the producer of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), the third film in the Harry Potter film series, and received an Academy Award nomination for producing The Help (2011).

Columbus founded his production company named 1492 Pictures in 1995.

The character types preferred by Columbus are the everyday American men, women, and children who struggle to uphold family traditions against a changing, sometimes intimidating society. In 1993, he said: "I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope. If your film isn't going to do that, I just don't think it's worth making."

Columbus created the House of Secrets book series with Ned Vizzini and co-founded a new animation studio called ZAG Animation Studios with Saban Capital Group and ZAG Entertainment.

Personal life

In 1982, Columbus married Monica Devereux, with whom he has four children: Eleanor (born 1989), Violet (born 1994), Brendan (born 1992), and Isabella. Columbus lives in San Francisco's Pacific Heights. Columbus and his wife listed their Pacific Heights home for sale in September 2013 for $12.995M. His children attend or previously attended Saint Ignatius College Preparatory. He donated money to the school for a new building, and the school's "piazza" is named after him.

Many of Columbus' family members —including his children, his wife, his mother, his father-in-law, and his cousin Robert Ayres— have appeared in cameo roles in his films. Particularly, his own daughter, Eleanor, portrayed the Hogwarts student Susan Bones in the first two Harry Potter films.