Biography for
James Ivory More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

7 June 1928, Berkeley, California, USA

Birth Name

James Francis Ivory

Mini Biography

The main part of his few movies were filmed in the quarter of a century in which he worked closely together with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the German writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. His first films are all set in India and are very much influenced by the style of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir. After this period, he filmed three stories in New York and then dedicated his work to the great works of the English literature which made him internationally famous. Examples of this period are The Europeans (1979) and The Bostonians (1984) by Henry James, Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980) by Jane Austen, Quartet (1981) by Jean Rhys or A Room with a View (1985) and Maurice (1987) by E.M. Forster.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Volker Boehm

Trivia

Graduated from USC School of Cinema-Television (1957).

From 1965 to 2005, he & his producer Ismail Merchant enjoyed a collaboration that is probably unequaled in movie history for its success and consistency. In 1987, the pair's accomplishments were honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. premiere of Maurice (1987), attended by scores of their devotees, including Christopher Reeve, Sam Waterston, Greta Scacchi and even U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

On location, producer Merchant is renowned for his cooking and feeding of cast & crew, a practice often necessary in Merchant/Ivory's earlier low-budget days.

He and partner Ismail Merchant were awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for their films' "visual beauty, mature and intelligent themes, shrewd casting and superb acting". [24 February 2002]

Earned his undergraduate degree from The University of Oregon in 1951. He donated his personal papers to the university in 2003.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has paintings of Jim and his partners, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - even though they all live in New York City and none of them are English. (Ruth is German/Polish, Ismail is Indian, and James is American).

Biography: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985," pp. 458-465. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Directed 6 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Vanessa Redgrave, Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Joanne Woodward and Anthony Hopkins. Thompson won an Oscar for Howards End (1992).

Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1993.

At the opening of the 58. Pula Film Festival (Croatia) Ivory was given a lifetime achievement award (2011).

Where Are They Now

(December 2006) He is filming The City of Your Final Destination (2007) in Argentina, during December 2006 - January 2007.