- Born
- Birth nameThomas Joseph McCarthy
- Nickname
- Tom
- Height5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
- Tom McCarthy is an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for direct and write The Station Agent (2003), The Visitor (2007), Win Win (2011), and Spotlight (2015), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Director.
McCarthy co-wrote the film Up (2009) with Bob Peterson and Pete Docter, for which they received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He also served as a director and executive producer for the Netflix television series 13 Reasons Why (2017).- IMDb mini biography by: Pedro Borges
- SpouseWendy Merry(? - present) (1 child)
- Low-key films about disparate people who become unusual surrogate families
- Directed 3 actors to an Oscar nominated performance: Richard Jenkins, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel McAdams.
- Graduated from Boston College in 1988.
- Graduated from New Providence High School in New Providence, NJ.
- As of 2016, has appeared in two films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) and Michael Clayton (2007), and in addition to that, he wrote two films that were nominated for the same category: Up (2009) and Spotlight (2015), the latter film in which he also directed.
- Co-starred on The Wire (2002) with another actor named Thomas J. McCarthy. Both actors were credited as Tom McCarthy, but they are not related.
- The Cobbler (2014) will always be a very special film to me. I've had a lot of wonderful response from "The Cobbler." I'm not here to defend any of the movies I make, but I can always speak very honestly that will never be diminished by anyone's perspective on it. [2015]
- So yeah, is it hard when a movie like The Cobbler (2014) doesn't connect critically. I'd never had that experience. But even when I was going through it, I had to have a good perspective about things, and sometimes in those situations I have the ability to go, "Wow, this is really interesting. This has never happened, and it's a really intense feeling." [2015]
- I can tell you I've taken something from each movie. Even The Cobbler (2014) - which, as you know, wasn't very critically well-received - I loved that movie. I know Spotlight (2015) is better for me having made that movie, because it's the first time I made movies back to back. So I was rolling right into "Spotlight" and I was taking all these lessons, not from the result because you don't learn from the result, but from the process: What did I not do in pre-production, what did I not do in production, what did I do in post and editing. I was rewriting "Spotlight" while I was editing "The Cobbler" and just kind of constantly thinking about it filmically. I knew I could get out of this scene here, I don't need this because I know where I'm going next, and it just makes you sharper. [2015]
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