“I used to like to think that I didn’t have a particular style, but then I noticed that when people were hiring me for films, they wanted a certain thing that I did. There are many different words to describe it, but the one I like to use is ‘realism’—not documentary realism, but an aesthetic that feels real, like a heightened realism.”
A modest man who lensed some of the most iconic movies of the 1970s and ’80s, Owen Roizman grew up in New York and began his career in commercials before transitioning to film, although he continued to helm commercials in between his film shoots. The son of a cameraman and the nephew of a film editor, Roizman first came to the industry’s attention as the director of photography on two classic William Friedkin films, Best Picture-winner The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973). From there, he became an in-demand cinematographer on landmark ’70s pictures such as Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972), The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974), The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975), Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976), and Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard, 1978). Starting with 1975’s Three Days of the Condor, Roizman began a long creative partnership with director Sydney Pollack, which continued with The Electric Horseman (1979), Absence of Malice (1981), Tootsie (1982), and Havana (1990). He also has collaborated several times with writer–director Lawrence Kasdan on I Love You to Death (1990), Grand Canyon (1991), Wyatt Earp (1994), and French Kiss (1995). A past President and current Vice President of the American Society of Cinematographers, Roizman received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Throughout his career, Roizman’s films focused on a realistic portrayal of their worlds, even in science-fiction and horror movies such as The Stepford Wives or The Exorcist. Roizman has been nominated for five Academy Awards in the span of 23 years.
