Biography

His top ten favorite films are The Passenger (1975), Andrei Rublev (1966), I Am Cuba (1964), The 400 Blows (1959), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), Mafioso (1962), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Viridiana (1961), and The Battle of Algiers (1966).

Prior to establishing his film career, Julian Schnabel made a name for himself (throughout the 1980s) as a "neo-expressionist" artist/painter (some of his paintings involved m smashed plates glued to wooden m panels). His work has been exhibited at art galleries around the world, and he has been known as the "self-proclaimed lion of the New York art world".

Did the paintings, photos, and art direction for the 2002 album "By the Way" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Created a pink, seven-floor-high Venezian palazzo with Romeo and Juliet balconies in Manhattan, where his family is living and his studio is situated.

Father of five children: Stella Schnabel, Vito Schnabel and Lola Schnabel with his first wife Jacqueline; the twins Cy Schnabel and Olmo Schnabel with his present wife Olatz López Garmendia. All of his children appeared on Before Night Falls (2000).

Art is a utilitarian thing, not a decorative thing.

[on At Eternity's Gate (2018)] I think everybody that's from the Western world is probably bottle-fed some concept of Van Gogh [Vincent van Gogh] as a painter. And probably Picasso. You don't know what they do, but you know you've heard the names. ...I'm from Brooklyn. I had no art education. Probably the first impression of a painting that I remember was the painting of 'Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer' by Rembrandt. So you have impressions when you're a child, and then you become a painter. Then you engage in the materiality of it and the way things are put together. You break everything down to all of the elements. And the more I do it, the more surprised I am at how difficult it is to watch anything. [2018]

Whatever you're gonna make, you gotta make it for yourself. The elements or the use of the material has to speak to you. I'm always surprised when people make paintings that are so predictable. [2018]

People might think they know how to do it better. Well, this is my version of what a movie could be. [2018]

[on Vincent van Gogh] I thought he was quite sane when he was painting. Those paintings are not paintings of madness. They're paintings of sanity. [2018]