Overview (3)

Mini Bio (1)

Alex Winter began his career as a child actor, spending several years on Broadway with co- starring roles in productions of 'The King & I', 'Peter Pan', and the American premiere of Simon Gray's 'Close of Play' at the Manhattan Theater Club. After completing NYU film school, he went on to have starring roles in several feature films, including Orion's huge hit 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' and its sequel 'Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey', the Warner Brothers smash 'The Lost Boys' and Percy Adlon's 'Rosalie Goes Shopping'.



In the 90's Winter began a busy career of directing commercials and music videos, alongside his narrative work. Winter co-wrote, directed and starred in the hit MTV series, 'The Idiot Box', and the Twentieth Century Fox release 'Freaked', which has been acclaimed by many critics including The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, who heralded 'Freaked' on their "Top Ten greatest comedies of the Nineties."



In 2000, Winter wrote and directed 'Fever', released by LionsGate Films. 'Fever' is a psychological thriller starring Henry Thomas, Teri Hatcher, Bill Duke and 'The Departed's' David O' Hara. The film has been invited to film festivals worldwide, including Official Selection in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. In The New York Times, A.O. Scott praised the film as "Pure Hitchcockian panic. An arresting example of what a talented filmmaker can do with the sparest of means."



In 2013, Winter returned to the screen in 'Grand Piano', directed by Eugenio Mira, from the Blacklist script by Damian Chezelle (La La Land), co-starring alongside Elijah Wood and John Cusack.



Winter founded Trouper Productions, a company that supports his films. In 2019, Winter released two new documentary feature films; The Panama Papers, about the biggest global corruption scandal in history and the journalists who worked in secret and at great risk to break the story. A multiple award-winner, The Panama Papers is executive produced by Laura Poitras, opened to a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is out now on Hulu, Amazon Prime and Epix in the US. Trust Machine: The Story Of Blockchain, about the rise of bitcoin and the blockchain was released last Fall and is now available on Amazon Prime.



Previous documentary work includes Deep Web, about the online black market Silk Road, and the trial of its creator Ross Ulbricht. The film premiered on the Epix network, opening as the #1 documentary on iTunes and earning a Cinema Eye nomination among several award wins. Deep Web is now available for streaming and VOD. Downloaded is a VH1 RockDoc about Napster and the digital revolution. The film premiered at SXSW, garnering worldwide critical acclaim at theatrical and festival screenings, and is available for digital download from all major outlets, free streaming on AOL in the US.



Zappa, the first all-access documentary on the life and times of Frank Zappa was set to premiere at the 2020 SXSW film festival. The Kickstarter campaign for this project was the highest funded documentary in crowdfunding history. Zappa will be released in the U.S. on November 27, 2020, by Magnolia Films.



Winter's Showbiz Kids documentary feature for HBO, produced by frequent collaborator Glen Zipper and Bill Simmons' Ringer Films, premiered July 14th on the network and is now available through HBO GO, HBO NOW, and on HBO via HBO Max and other partners' platforms. The highly anticipated third installment in the Bill & Ted franchise, Bill & Ted Face The Music opened in the U.S. to critical acclaim in August of 2020.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Trouper Prods.

Spouse (2)

Trivia (13)



When trying out for the parts of Bill and Ted, each actor was paired up with another. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter were paired up, Reeves trying out for the part of Bill while Winter trying out for the part of Ted. They were cast opposite what they tried out for.



Father, with Sonya Dawson , of son Leroy, born in 1998.



Attended film school at New York University with Tom Stern . They became good friends and have collaborated on several film projects.

Graduated from Montclair Highschool in 1983. There he attended the school of performing arts.



He studied Film at college in New York City and starred in a number of plays whilst still a student.



Moved from London to St. Louis when he was 5. There his father, Ross, ran the Mid-American Dance Company, the Midwest's largest modern dance troupe, and his mother, Gregg Mayer, taught dance at Washington University. He has a brother named Stephen.





Made his musical stage debut at age 10 in the St. Louis Opera production of "Oliver!" starring Vincent Price as Fagin. Alex played one of the urchins.



Appeared in a couple of Broadway musical productions as a teenager. He was a replacement son Louis in Yul Brynner 's revival of "The King and I" in 1978 and the following year played young John Darling in "Peter Pan" starring Sandy Duncan

Born on the 10 year anniversary of the opening of Disneyland.



His father, an Australian, had English, German, Cornish, and more distant Scottish, ancestry. His mother's family, from New York, is Ashkenazi Jewish.



Personal Quotes (28)

Hitchcock had to fight to the death to make his movies.



I just like movies that somehow expose the world in a way that's different than you imagine it.



I get very driven by certain themes and ideas.





Certain remakes are great. [John] Carpenter's Das Ding aus einer anderen Welt (1982) is better than the original.

My favorite favorites are people like Bunuel, Fellini and Charlie Chaplin.



But it is funny, because I saw Unbreakable recently and it's a strange movie, I didn't mind it, and it's got some interesting things going on.



Coppola has problems getting financing, so why should I not have problems getting financing.



I direct a lot of TV commercials and music videos.



I really love sort of classical cinema where people were telling stories with very little dialogue, and people were using the camera in a really interesting way.



I actually did use to sell shoes.



I think movies are good for getting into dream states or exploring weird alternate states of thinking.



I'm not trying to be some kind of underground renegade.





I'm one of the few people who really like Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.



I think filmmakers want their movies to be seen.



Same thing, like my commercials are often times really funny because I tend to find 30 seconds is a really good amount of time to tell a joke.



It's hard for a hit to be bad for your career.



I'm really influenced by so many different things.



After living in LA for 8 years, I sort of wanted a change, but there's not much production in New York, which is where I primarily live, so I just sort of drifted over to London.



They're innocent movies, and they're fun movies and there were no pretensions about 'em.



The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment.





That's kind of the weird thing that M. Night Shyamalan has sort of unleashed upon the world is this need for every movie to have these ridiculous endings.

I'm not saying it isn't frustrating that my films haven't gotten a bigger release, but I'm really happy with them and if you just keep cranking and eventually, if you have a certain sensibility, some of your movies will hit and some just won't.





Like I said about Freaked Monstrum (1993), people tend to find these films, and I think that in the end the cool thing about a movie is that it can be sort of burnt temporarily, but then it's burnt into the fabric of your culture.

The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth.





With Fever (1999), the film was so made for the screen, and there's so much surround sound that was done for the film - enormous detail paid to that. I wasn't thinking video, because I didn't know how it was going to turn out.

The trick of making movies in this culture is how to not give up everything that makes them worthwhile in order to get them made - and that's a tricky balance.

