Duncan Jones

The son of protean British rock legend David Bowie, Duncan Jones chose to avoid both his father's profession and the tragic choices made by many children of celebrities, focusing instead on a directorial career that yielded a critical hit with his debut, "Moon" (2009) and a box office winner with the more action-oriented "Source Code" (2011). Raised in the volatile, drug-fueled relationship between Bowie and his mother, Angela Bowie, Jones found solace in film and science fiction, which would become his primary interests when he pursued a career as a cameraman and director as an adult. After working on several high-profile projects, including concert films for his father and a polarizing ad campaign for the French Connection fashion line, Jones made his directorial debut with the unsettling "Moon," with Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who flirts with madness while working alone on the lunar surface. A critical hit, it led to the Stateside action-thriller "Source Code," which proved Jones could handle mainstream genre pictures. His selection as director for the high-profile "Warcraft" (2016) film, based on the popular online fantasy game, indicated that Jones had at long last shrugged off the mantle of his famous father and assumed status and respect in his own right.

Born Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones on May 30, 1971 in Bromley, England, he was the son of rock icon David Bowie and his first wife, model turned actress and writer Angela Bowie. By all accounts, his childhood embodied the privileges and pitfalls inherent to the sons and daughters of celebrities: his father spurred his love for film through visits to the sets of his movies like "Labyrinth" (1986) and collaborations on stop-motion animated projects, as well as interest in alternative science fiction via the novels of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard. But David and Angela Bowie were both alcoholics and drug addicts during their son's earliest years - Bowie's song "Kooks," from the album, Hunky Dory (1971), was about Jones, and essentially warned him to not follow in their eccentric footsteps - and shuttled him between homes in London, Berlin and Switzerland under the care of a nanny while Bowie toured or indulged in drug binges with his wife. In 1980, their relationship collapsed under the twin strains of stardom and addiction, and Bowie was granted custody of his son. Jones was shipped off to Gordonstoun, a Scottish boarding school where his unique name and rock star parentage set him apart from his classmates. However, Jones' story did not follow the grisly path trod by many offspring of famous parents. He developed an interest in professional wrestling, which led to an athletic frame. By the age of 18, he had pursued a degree in philosophy from The College of Wooster. After graduating in 1995, he initially undertook Ph.

D studies at Vanderbilt University before switching gears to study film at the London Film School. He completed the program and worked in various capacities in the industry, including camerawork for his father's televised 50th birthday party at Madison Square Garden and the British/Canadian anthology series "The Hunger" (Showtime/SyFy/The Movie Network 1997-2000) for producer Tony Scott. (His sometime actor father had starred in Scott's original film.) In 2006, he garnered international attention - and criticism - for a series of television commercials for the French Connection fashion label. The spots featured two women, representing "fashion" and "style," that engage in a vicious physical fight before settling their differences with a kiss. After completing his first short film, a science fiction/thriller called "Whistle" (2002), Jones approached actor Sam Rockwell with another genre project called "Mute." Rockwell passed on the initial script, which called for him to play the antagonist, but found that he shared Jones' interest in alternative and dystopic versions of the future. The filmmaker teamed with writer Nathan Parker to write a new project for Rockwell called "Moon" (2009), an eerie science fiction-cum-psychological thriller about an astronaut whose solitary work on a lunar base begins to unravel his sanity. Funded in part by Trudie Styler's Xingu Films, "Moon" captured numerous awards, including the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. Two years later, he scored a mainstream box office hit with "Source Code" (2011), an action-packed science fiction-drama with Jake Gyllenhaal as an Air Force pilot who uses the titular device, which allows individuals to experience life as another person within an alternate timeline, to find a bomber targeting a Chicago commuter train.