SXSWORLD

Photo by Chuck Hodes DISCOVERING LEE DANIELS How the Groundbreaking Filmmaker Does It His Way By danielle nussBaum 1 2 SXS W O R L D | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXSW.COM  Daniels grew up in West Philadelphia, the youngest of five. Dad was a policeman; mom held various jobs. Daniels picked up a hard- cover copy of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a public library when he was eight years old and would make the neighborhood kids act it out on his stoop. "I didn't know it was directing but I guess it was," he recalls. "They would do anything I said." (This would serve him well, as he has famously shouted at everyone from David Oyelowo to Oprah Winfrey while directing.)  Daniels moved to Hollywood in his teens and directed plays at local churches while working at a nursing staffing company .By the age of 21, he had opened his own staffing agency and sold it for millions. He then became a casting director (notably working on Purple Rain), and talent manager before producing his first film, Monster's Ball, for which Halle Berry won an Oscar in 2001.  His directorial debut, Shadowboxer, featured an unorthodox mother/stepson duo of assassins (Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Audiences truly began to take notice with the based-on-a-true- story 2009 drama Precious, which earned Daniels a Best Director Oscar nomination. When he first brought the film to Sundance,  ee Daniels—writer, producer, director, actor—is in Atlanta working 16-hour days on his new Fox series, Star, and jumps on the phone enthusiastically, declaring: "I don't know what to talk about first!" But ask him about his favorite part of filmmaking, and the gregarious showman falls uncharacteristically quiet.  "I really like discovery," he finally says, and pauses again, considering his words carefully. "I find it sometimes in my writing. I find it sometimes in my directing. I find it some- times in my producing. Whether it's a Gabourey Sidibe and I'm directing, or a director I discovered like Mark Forster for Monster's Ball, or whether it's letting America know that Taraji P. Henson was always our Meryl Streep in the 'hood. What I like most is being able to take pride in introducing talent or new ideas to the public."  To Daniels, introducing the world to the new is exciting; to the world, meeting Daniels has been new and exciting at every turn. And though the 56-year-old has no formal filmmaker training, he has gone on to create vividly emotional portrayals of the African-American experience on screens both big and small.

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