
Eli Roth (born 18.04.1972) Eli Roth is an award-winning American director and actor famous for his work on the movie 'Hostel' and 'Cabin Fever'.
Childhood: Eli Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts to Jewish parents. His parents are psychiatrist Dr. Sheldon Roth and painter Cora Roth. He was inspired to embark on a filmmaking career after watching Ridley Scott's 'Alien' when he was 8. He attended Newton South High School and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While at University, he ran film producer Frederick Zollo's office. One of his first jobs when he moved to LA was as an extra on legal drama 'The Practice'.
Film Career: Towards the end of university, Eli Roth wrote and directed a movie called 'Restaurant Dogs' after watching Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' and it was nominated for a Student Academy Award. He met 'The Elephant Man' director David Lynch through his work with Zollo and subsequently met composer Angelo Badalamenti through him, who went on to write the music for Roth's first feature film 'Cabin Fever'. He moved to LA in 1999 and made a series of short animations for Mandalay Sports Entertainment with Noah Belson called 'Chowdaheads' which was meant to air between 'WCW Monday Nitro' wrestling matches but never did because the CEO at the time was fired. The pair also made a stop motion animation series called 'The Rotten Fruit'. Roth's first big break was with 2003's 'Cabin Fever'; a horror movie inspired loosely by a skin infection he caught horseriding in Iceland. It was made with a $1.5 million budget and grossed 35 million worldwide on its release. Quentin Tarantino called it his favourite new film in 2004 and dubbed Roth 'the future of horror'. His next film, 'Hostel', was number one at the box office when it opened in 2006 and grossed $80 million at the box office worldwide - 20 times the movie's budget. Roth has been credited with the creation of sub-genre 'torture porn' or 'gorno' which refers to the excitement built up in a movie from excessive violence. 'Hostel' was voted as Best Horror Film of 2007 in Empire Magazine. 'Hostel: Part II' did not fare as well as the first movie at the box office, though it is thought that an online leak of the movie resulting in millions of illegal downloads contributed to the poor sales. In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed horror double feature called 'Grindhouse' which included Rodriguez's 'Planet Terror' and Tarantino's 'Death Proof'. Each feature was preceded by a series of fake movie trailers; Roth created a trailer for a movie called 'Thanksgiving' in the 'Death Proof' segment (as well as also appearing in that movie) but is set to release a full length version of it in 2013.
Other Career Centures: Eli Roth is producing martial arts film 'The Man with the Iron Fist' directed by and starring The RZA. Quentin Tarantino is also said to be involved. Roth has contributed to DVD extras and audio commentaries of various films including horror flicks Juan Piquer Simon's 'Pieces' and Lucio Fulci's 'Cat in the Brain' as well as Troma's 'Blood Sucking Freaks'. He voiced the lumberjack in animated comedy 'Disaster!' He also co-starred in Tarantino's WW2 movie 'Inglourious Basterds' alongside Brad Pitt and had a cameo in 'Piranha 3DD'. He produced 'The Last Exorcism' with Eric Newman and Marc Abraham which was released in 2010. He also worked on the sequel 'The Last Exorcism Part 2' which will be released in March 2013. Roth hosted an episode of the Discovery Channel's 'Curiosity' series called 'How Evil Are You?' which saw him explore the science behind evil and undergo a brain scan. He has written and stars in Chile based horror 'Aftershock' which will be released in 2013.
Biography by Contactmusic.com