Biography

Chris Buck is an animation film director from Wichita, Kansas. He directed the Disney animated films Tarzan, Frozen, Frozen Fever and Frozen II and Sony Pictures Animation's Surf's Up. He was a supervising animator for Percy, Grandmother Willow and Wiggins for Pocahontas. He won Best Animated Feature for Frozen. He had three children with Shelley Rae Hinton.
- IMDb mini biography by: Christian Frates

His eldest son, Ryder, died at the age of 23 on October 27, 2013, in a car collision, when he was hit by two cars after his car broke down on the Glendale Freeway. Ryder was a singer and songwriter performing in his band Ryder Buck and the Breakers, and was recovering from a year-long battle with a Stage 4 testicular cancer. On March 2, 2014, upon accepting the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for co-directing Frozen (2013) at the 86th Academy Awards, Buck dedicated the award to Ryder.

Everyone's asking if there will be a 'Frozen 2', but at the Studio there's actually been no talk about it!

When it comes to classic Disney, I've got it in my DNA. I mean, the guy who trained me, the man who mentored me when I first came to the Studio was Eric Larson, one of Walt's Nine Old Men.

I think what I reacted to so strongly when I first saw 'Pinocchio' was that I identified with the character so strongly. The movie takes you on a whole journey, a rollercoaster of emotions, and that sometimes means some very scary places. But in the end, it comes out okay.

You have a soft spot in your heart for each movie, and you're doing certain things. You're learning as you're going, as a director, and each movie is its own entity.

Luckily, I went to school at CalArts, and then ended up here at Disney, starting in the Animation Building and working my way up. I started as an animator, and then did character designing and storyboarding, and eventually, directing.