- Born
- Birth nameChristopher Allen McQuarrie
- Nickname
- McQ
- Christopher McQuarrie is an acclaimed producer, director and an Academy Award® winning writer. McQuarrie grew up in Princeton Junction, New Jersey and in lieu of college, he spent the first five years out of school traveling and working at a detective agency. He later moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film.
In 1995, his screenplay for The Usual Suspects, directed by childhood pal, Bryan Singer, garnered him the Academy Award® and the BAFTA Award for "Best Original Screenplay". McQuarrie also went on to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Independent Spirit Award. The Usual Suspects has been named one of the greatest screenplays of all time by the Writer's Guild of America.
In the years following, McQuarrie directed The Way of the Gun, starring Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro and James Caan. In 2008, he collaborate with Singer once again to produce and co-write Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise. This film would lead to many more McQuarrie-Cruise collaborations. McQuarrie re-teamed with Cruise in 2012 for his sophomore directorial outing, Jack Reacher Within hours of completing the film, he was at work with Cruise again, this time re-writing the script for Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow. It was while working together on the sci-fi action film that Cruise suggested McQuarrie direct what would become Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. The highly anticipated fifth installment of the Ethan Hunt saga, written also by McQuarrie, garnered the biggest opening in the history of the Mission: Impossible franchise, was the highest-grossing 2D Hollywood film ever at the Chinese box office, earning $124 million, and garnered over $680 million worldwide. McQuarrie is confirmed to write and direct the sixth chapter in the franchise, making him the first repeat director in the film's two-decade history.
- IMDb mini biography by: PMK*BNC
- SpouseHeather McQuarrie(? - present)
- ChildrenWilhelmina McQuarrie
- RelativesDoug McQuarrie(Sibling)
- Frequently works with Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise
- Frequently casts Benicio Del Toro
- Wrote a screenplay for The Wolverine (2013) which Darren Aronofsky was set to direct. After Aronofsky's departure from the film, McQuarrie's screenplay was heavily rewritten and his name was removed from the credits.
- Had written considerable amount of dialog for the character Harold Longbaugh in the cult action film The Way of the Gun (2000). However, Benicio Del Toro suggested the "less is more" approach and had him cut down his lines.
- He was hired by frequent collaborator Tom Cruise to do revisions to the screenplay for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). McQuarrie's work was originally given a shared 'written by' credit. This was evident in the first trailer for the movie. However, the Writer's Guild of America removed McQuarrie's name from any writing credit by the time the movie was released on December 16, 2011.
- Had done an uncredited rewrite of the screenplay for the sci-fi action film X-Men (2000). He chose not to have his name on the credits as he felt that the screenplay was mostly the vision of David Hayter.
- Won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay in The Usual Suspects (1995).
- Action to me is something very fun to shoot.
- Oh my God, you look at all the uniforms in Star Wars, and it's all Nazi iconography.
- I believe that as a writer and a director, you're only providing the skeleton of a character, and you're hiring actors to fill it out.
- While I was a voracious moviegoer as a boy, I never put writing and films together in my mind.
- A lot of books, if you take them at face value, they're just not gonna work as films.
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