"Hitchcock had to fight to the death to make his movies." -- Alex Winter
Alexander Ross "Alex" Winter (born July 17, 1965) is an English-American actor, director, and film writer, best known as Bill S. Preston Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its 1991 sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. He is also well known for his role as Marko in the 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys and for co-writing, co-directing and starring in the 1993 film Freaked.
"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.""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.""Certain remakes are great. Carpenter's The Thing is better than the original.""Coppola has problems getting financing, so why should I not have problems getting financing.""I actually did use to sell shoes.""I direct a lot of TV commercials and music videos.""I get very driven by certain themes and ideas.""I just like movies that somehow expose the world in a way that's different than you imagine it.""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 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.""I think movies are good for getting into dream states or exploring weird alternate states of thinking.""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.""I'm not trying to be some kind of underground renegade.""I'm one of the few people who really like Eyes Wide Shut.""I'm really influenced by so many different things.""It's hard for a hit to be bad for your career.""Like I said about Freaked, 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.""My favorite favorites are people like Bunuel, Fellini and Charlie Chaplin.""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.""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.""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.""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.""The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.""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.""They're innocent movies, and they're fun movies and there were no pretensions about 'em.""With Fever, 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."
Winter was born in London, England. He is Jewish. His mother, Gregg (née Mayer), was a New York-born American who was a former Martha Graham dancer and founded a modern-dance company in London in the mid-1960s. His father, Ross Albert Winter, was Australian and danced with Winter's mother's troupe. Alex Winter Biography - Yahoo! Movies Alex Winter Biography (1965-) Winter himself received training in dance as a child. When he was five, his family moved to Missouri, where his father ran the Mid-American Dance Company, while his mother taught dance at Washington University. Bill and Ted - Articles Archive The two divorced in 1973.
He moved to New York in 1978 and began performing as an actor on and off Broadway. In 1983 he was accepted into the Film School at New York University (NYU). While at college, he met fellow aspiring filmmaker Tom Stern. The two collaborated on a number of 16mm short films and both graduated with honors.
As an actor, Winter spent many years on Broadway with supporting roles in productions of The King & I, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and the American premiere of Simon Gray's Close of Play at the Manhattan Theater Club. After completing NYU film school, he and Tom Stern moved out to Hollywood, where the two wrote and directed a number of short films and music videos. Winter continued to find work as an actor, landing major roles in such big productions as The Lost Boys and Rosalie Goes Shopping. In 1989, Winter found international success when he co-starred with Keanu Reeves as Bill S. Preston in the smash-hit comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
Following the success of Bill & Ted, Winter and creative collaborators Tom Stern and Tim Burns were hired to develop a sketch comedy show for MTV. The result, 1991's The Idiot Box, was a success for the network, but the channel's budgetary problems prevented them from filming additional seasons, and it was canceled after six episodes. Winter, Stern, and Burns accepted a $12 million deal from 20th Century Fox to film their own feature film, which would end up becoming 1993's Freaked. While the film was never widely released, despite positive reviews from The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly, Freaked went on to become a cult favorite, through festivals, TV and DVD, and was cited by Entertainment Weekly, on their list of Top Ten Comedies of the Nineties.
Winter did not return to the director's chair until 1999, when he filmed Fever. The film was shown at film festivals worldwide, including Official Selection in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. The New York Daily News praised the film, calling it "a claustrophobic mind bender. Winter sustains an aura of creepiness worthy of Roman Polanski".
Winter works between his American home base and London, where he directs music videos and commercials. Highlights of his work include directing several installments of the popular Peugeot Thelma & Louise campaign, as well as campaigns for Ford, the global launch of the all CGI Tony the Tiger for Frosties, and award-winning spots for Supercuts and Google in the US.
In 2007, Winter returned to acting after a nearly 14-year absence to do a guest spot on the crime series Bones. Currently, he has a recurring role as the voice of 'King Mole Man' on the Adult Swim show, Saul of the Molemen, which was created by long-time friend Tom Stern, and has directed the live-action adaptation of the hit Cartoon Network series Ben 10, which aired in November 2007 and garnered the highest ratings in Cartoon Network history. Recently, he directed its sequel, Alien Swarm which aired on Cartoon Network in November 2009 and captured over 16 million viewers in its premiere weekend.He has reportedly been chosen to write the screenplay for the Howard Stern-produced remake of Rock 'n' Roll High School. Right now he is working on a 3D-remake of the 1987 horror movie The Gate which is scheduled for release in 2011. As of September 2010 there is a strong rumour that a third Bill and Ted movie is to be made.
Freaked (1993) (also co-writer, co-producer and actor [Ricky Coogin])
Fever (1999) (also writer and actor [subway passenger])
The Gate (2011)
TV and home video
NYU Sight & Sound Project (mid-1980s) (student short film, released on DVD, also actor)
Squeal of Death (1985) (short film, aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable, released on VHS and DVD, also co-writer and actor)
Aisles of Doom (1989) (short film, aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable, released on VHS, also co-writer and actor [Grendel T.W. Ulcerous])
Stuart S. Shapiro's Impact Video Magazine (1989), includes, among others, Entering Texas a.k.a. Bar-B-Que Movie (VHS, also actor)
Howie Meets the Ghost of Environmental Disasters Yet to Come (1990) (short film for the Nigel Dick-directed Save the Planet: A CBS/Hard Rock Cafe Special, aired on CBS April 20, 1990, also actor)
The Idiot Box (1991) (MTV show, also co-writer and actor)
Meals on Wheels (1991 or 1992) (short film for The Playboy Channel's Inside Out late night anthology series, also co-writer and actor)
Tabla Beat Science: Talamanam Sound Clash (2003) (concert DVD, co-directed by Zane Vella)
Dirty Famous (2005) (VH1 pilot)
Race Against Time (2007) (Cartoon Network film, also executive producer and actor [Constantine Jacobs])
Alien Swarm (2009) (Cartoon Network film, also executive producer and voice actor [Nanomech])
Jimmy Kimmel Live! segments
The Andy Milonakis Show
Music videos
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Knock Me Down"
Ice Cube - "Who's the Mack?" (1990)
Human Radio - "Me & Elvis" (1990)
Extreme - "Decadence Dance" (1990)
Ronny Jordan - "The Jackal" (1993)
Helmet - "Milquetoast" (1994)
Helmet - "Wilma's Rainbow" (1994)
Bomb the Bass feat. Carlton - "1 to 1 Religion" (1995)
