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Stan Winston (April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008) was an American special effects and make-up artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, and Edward Scissorhands. He won a total of four Academy Awards for his work.
Winston, a frequent collaborator with director James Cameron, owned more than one effects studio, including Stan Winston Digital. The established areas of expertise for Winston were in makeup, puppets and practical effects, but he had recently expanded his studio to encompass digital effects as well.
Stan Winston was born on April 7, 1946, in Arlington, Virginia. He studied painting and sculpture at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, from which he graduated in 1968. In 1969, after attending California State University, Long Beach, Winston moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actor. Struggling to find an acting job, he began a makeup apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios.
In 1972, Winston established his own company, Stan Winston Studio, and won an Emmy Award for his effects work on the telefilm Gargoyles. Over the next seven years, Winston continued to receive Emmy nominations for work on projects such as The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Winston also created the Wookiee costumes for the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special.
In 1982, Winston received his first Oscar nomination for Heartbeeps, by which time he had set up his own studio.
In 1983, Winston designed the Mr. Roboto facemask for the American rock group Styx.
Winston reached a new level of fame in 1984 when James Cameron's The Terminator premiered. The movie was a surprise hit, and Winston's work bringing the metallic killing machine to life led to many new projects and additional collaborations with Cameron. In fact, Winston won his first Oscar for Best Visual Effects in 1986 on James Cameron's next movie, Aliens.
Over the next few years, Winston and his company received more accolades for its work on many more Hollywood films, including Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, John McTiernan's Predator, Alien Nation, The Monster Squad, and Predator 2.
In 1989, Winston made his directorial debut with the horror movie Pumpkinhead, and won Best First Time Director at the Paris Film Festival. Although poorly received at the box office, Pumpkinhead has since become somewhat of a cult classic. His next directing project was the child-friendly A Gnome Named Gnorm (1990), starring Anthony Michael Hall.
James Cameron drafted Winston and his team once again in 1990, this time for the groundbreaking Terminator 2: Judgment Day. T2 premiered in the summer of 1991, and Winston's work on this box office hit won him two more Oscars for Best Makeup Effects and Best Visual Effects.
Winston turned his attention from cyborgs to dinosaurs when Steven Spielberg enlisted his help to bring Jurassic Park to life. In 1993, the movie became a blockbuster and Winston won another Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
In 1993, Winston, Cameron and ex-ILM General Manager Scott Ross co-founded Digital Domain, one of the foremost digital and visual effects studios in the world. In 1998, after the box office success of Titanic, Cameron and Winston severed their working relationship with the company and resigned from its board of directors.
Winston and his team continued to provide effects work for many more films and expanded their work into animatronics. Some of Winston's notable animatronics work can be found in The Ghost and the Darkness and T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, James Cameron's 3-D continuation of the Terminator series for the Universal Studios theme park. One of Winston's most ambitious animatronics projects was Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, which earned Winston another Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects.
In 2001, Winston produced a series of made-for-TV movies for HBO/Cinemax with the titles of old American International monster films - including Earth vs the Spider (1958), How to Make a Monster (1958), Day the World Ended (1956), The She-Creature (1956), and Teenage Cave Man (1958) - but with completely different plots.
According to reports, next for Stan Winston was Jurassic Park IV. Winston was also signed on to help with the monster effects on The Suffering, which is based on the horror video game.
Stan Winston died on June 15, 2008, at his home in Malibu, California after suffering for seven years with multiple myeloma.[1] A spokeswoman reported that "Stan died peacefully at home surrounded by family."[2] It is not known if his work on Terminator 4 was completed before his death. A teaser for the upcoming Terminator film will premiere with The Dark Knight.
Academy Awards
1982: Oscar Nomination For Best Makeup: Heartbeeps
1987: Won Oscar For Best Visual Effects: Aliens
1988: Oscar Nomination For Best Visual Effects: Predator
1991: Oscar Nomination For Best Makeup: Edward Scissorhands
1992: Won 2 Oscars - Best Visual Effects & Best Makeup: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1993: Oscar Nomination For Best Makeup: Batman Returns
1994: Won Oscar For Best Visual Effects: Jurassic Park
1998: Oscar Nomination For Best Visual Effects: The Lost World: Jurassic Park
2002: Oscar Nomination For Best Visual Effects: A.I.
Notable films
Heartbeeps (1981)
The Thing (1982)
Friday the 13th Part III (1983)
The Terminator (1984)
Aliens (1986)
The Monster Squad (1987)
Predator (1987)
Leviathan (1988)
Pumpkinhead (1989)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Predator 2 (1990)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Batman Returns (1992)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Congo (1995)
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996)
T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996)
Ghosts (1997)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Small Soldiers (1998)
Lake Placid (1999)
End of Days (1999)
Pearl Harbor (2001)
A.I. (2001)
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Darkness Falls (2002)
Big Fish (2003)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Wrong Turn (2003)
Constantine (2005)
Iron Man (2008)
Upcoming films
Black Mountain (2008)
Avatar (2009)
Jurassic Park IV (2009)
Terminator 4 (2009)
The Suffering (TBA)
He made a living as a stand-up comedian before moving into make-up effects.
Moved to Hollywood in 1968 to become an actor, but no jobs came his way and the following year he became an apprentice in the Makeup Department at Walt Disney Studios.
Has earned the reputation of being a "creature creator." His first such assignment was for the TV movie Gargoyles.
One of the founders of visual effects companies Digital Domain, Stan Winston Digital and Stan Winston studios.
Winston was the second special effects artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In November 2006, Titan Books published The Winston Effect: The Art & History of Stan Winston Studio, a retrospective of Winston's career, including in-depth interviews and archival photography from every project in which the Studio participated.
His son, Matt, is an actor, possibly best known for his role as Temporal Agent Daniels on Star Trek: Enterprise.
Despite helping to design the original Terminator Endoskeleton, Stan Winston is not involved with the television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
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