Biography

Harald Zwart

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Overview

Born
July 1, 1965 · Netherlands
Birth name
Harald Johan Zwart
Height
5′ 7¾″ (1.72 m)

Mini bio

Harald Zwart was born in Leiden, Netherlands, and his family moved to Norway where he grew up. He made his first film when he was 8 years and was active with Super8 and stop motion animation for years. He was accepted into the highly acclaimed Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam, NL, where he spent 4 years, specializing in Directing, Script and Editing. Harald's exam film "Garbriel's Surprise" (about a young man who was given a second chance by Gabriel to correct the wrong), was screened on all Scandinavian TV stations and Harald was quickly headhunted into doing commercials in Norway. He met his wife and partner Veslemoey Ruud Zwart and they've worked together since. She started managing his deals and started the company Zwart Arbeid A/S

After a few years of producing and directing award winning commercials all over Europe, they did their first feature, "Commander Hamilton" [tt0119249/], and then they got "the call" from Hollywood where were invited to have lunch with Steven Spielberg. He had seen the commercials and was impressed by the concise story telling and humor. Shortly after the couple moved permanently to Los Angeles where Veslemoey started Motion Blur. A commercial film production company where they continued to make ads for the world wide market.

Their first feature was "One Night At McCool's" with Michael Douglas producing, starring Liv Tyler, John Goodman, Matt Dillon, Paul Reiser, Reba McIntyre and more.

Since then they have continued producing under the Zwart Arbeid banner, and opened Motion Blur films and commercials in Norway where they have steadfast produced films, TV shows and commercials. Harald travels all over the world to direct commercials for all the markets, and in the US he's most known for the Capital One Commercials with the Vikings. He's most known for the movies The Karate Kid with Will Smith and Overbrook/SONY producing, and "The 12th Man" which they produced under their own company Zwart Arbeid with Nordisk Film distributing.

Their latest Norwegian Movie "Lange Flate Ballær" went straight to #1 and is the highest grossing Norwegian movie so far in 2022.
- IMDb mini biography by: Zwart Arbeid

Family

Spouse

Trademarks

Fast-paced films

Trivia

His father is from the Netherlands. His mother, who died when he was 12, was from Norway. Zwart himself was born in the Netherlands but grew up in Norway and is a Norwegian citizen.
Always sneaks the flag of his local soccer-club, Fredrikstad Fotballklubb (FFK), into all his movies.
His favorite movies are "Back to the Future" (1985), "Amadeus" and "A Few Good Men".
Harald Zwart donates props from his all movies such as Commander Hamilton (1998); One Night at McCool's (2001) and Agent Cody Banks (2003) for the local cinema in his home-town of Fredrikstad. There's a "Planet Hollywood"-type museum there and in Fredrikstad, the place is popularly known as "Haraldwood". HE also has a movie theatre named after him.
The first Norwegian to become a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA).