Biography

John Dahl was born on June 15, 1956 in Billings, Montana, USA. He is a director and writer, known for The Last Seduction (1994), Red Rock West (1993) and Kill Me Again (1989). He is married to Beth Jana Friedberg. They have four children.

Good friends with director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was an outspoken fan of Dahl's debut feature film Kill Me Again (1989), and helped Red Rock West (1993) get off the ground by convincing his nephew Nicolas Cage to star in the film.

Was once one of Bill Pullman's drama students.

In 1994, John Dahl was set to direct "Meltdown", an action thriller starring Dolph Lundgren based on a John Carpenter screenplay and the novel "The Prometheus Crisis" (from the authors of 'The Glass Inferno'). The production was shut down only days before the start of principal photography because of a legal dispute between Miramax and Trimark pictures regarding distribution. The project remained unproduced after other attempts to get it off the ground.

Is the only director from the United States to have more than one movie on Siskel & Ebert's Top Ten List in the same year. In 1994, Red Rock West (1993) made Siskel's list and The Last Seduction (1994) made Ebert's list. The only other directors to do this are Jan Troell, Werner Herzog, Claude Berri, Yves Robert, and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Has no relation to British children's author Roald Dahl (1916-1990).

A Clockwork Orange (1971) captured my imagination so much. It was the first film that I saw that made me realize that somebody has to make this stuff. Somebody has to build those sets. Somebody has to paint those paintings. All of a sudden it became accessible. The movie was so compelling and interesting to me on so many levels. The one thing that struck me was that somebody made a movie, and that it was something that maybe, possibly, I could do.