Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois, and his family subsequently resided in Oklahoma before he attended school in Austin, Texas. He went on to complete his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.
As a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, Malick was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to attend Magdalen College, Oxford, where he did not complete his thesis on Martin Heidegger due to a disagreement with his advisor. Instead, he returned to the United States and taught philosophy at M.I.T., publishing a translation of Heidegger's "Vom Wesen des Grundes" as "The Essence of Reasons".
Malick did not pursue a PhD in philosophy, instead opting to attend the American Film Institute Conservatory in 1969, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in filmmaking. His master's thesis, the 17-minute comedy short "Lanton Mills", starred Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton, and Malick himself acted in the film.
During his time at A.F.I., Malick formed lasting associations with Jack Fisk, who would go on to become an Oscar-nominated art director and production designer, and Mike Medavoy, who became his agent and helped him secure work doctoring scripts and marketing his original screenplays.
Malick's early screenwriting credits include the 1972 films "Deadhead Miles" and "Pocket Money", both of which were met with commercial disappointment. However, this experience influenced him to begin directing his own scripts, leading to the critically acclaimed films "Badlands" (1973) and "Days of Heaven" (1978).
Malick took a self-imposed retirement from filmmaking for nearly two decades before returning with the adaptation of James Jones's "The Thin Red Line" (1998),which received seven Academy Award nominations, including nods for directing and adapted screenplay.
Malick's subsequent films, "The New World" (2005) and "The Tree of Life" (2011),were released with relatively short gaps between, and he reportedly worked on ideas for "The Tree of Life" since the late 1970s. In an unprecedented burst of productivity, he shot his next four films, "To the Wonder" (2012),"Knight of Cups" (2015),an as-yet unnamed drama, and the documentary "Voyage of Time: Life's Journey" (2016),back-to-back, all of which are highly anticipated by cinephiles worldwide.
