Julie Taymor
Director, Costume Design, Mask/Puppet Co-Design, Additional Lyrics

Julie won the 1998 Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical and for Best Costumes for The Lion King. In 2008, the musical won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes. It also garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor’s direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mask (Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater), nominated for five Tony® Awards. Other theatre work includes The Green Bird (New Victory Theater, La Jolla Playhouse and the Cort Theater on Broadway); Titus Andronicus, The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew (Theatre for a New Audience); Juan Darién (Music-Theatre Group); co-adapter and director of The Transposed Heads (Lincoln Center and American Music Theatre Festival) and Liberty’s Taken (Castle Hill Festival). For her latest Broadway production, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and co-book writer. Her recent opera productions include an original opera, Grendel, composed by Elliot Goldenthal (Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival, 2006), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer. Her direction of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2004 and is now in repertoire there. Taymor's film Across the Universe received a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Musical/Comedy in 2008. Her first film, Fool’s Fire, an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, aired on PBS in 1992. She directed her first feature, Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, in 1999. Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, received five Academy Award® nominations and two Oscars® in 2002. Taymor's latest film is The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren, Djimon Hounsou, Russell Brand and Ben Whishaw. Taymor has received a MacArthur “genius” grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Obie Awards and the first annual Dorothy B. Chandler Award in Theater among many others. A book spanning her career, Julie Taymor: Playing With Fire, is in its third edition from Abrams.