John Lasseter

John Alan Lasseter (/ˈlæsətər/; January 12, 1957, Hollywood, California, USA) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, voice actor, and the head of animation at Skydance Animation. He was previously the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.

Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on then-groundbreaking use of CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. In addition, he directed Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Cars (2006), and Cars 2 (2011). From 2006 to 2018, Lasseter also oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' (and its division Disneytoon Studios') films and associated projects as executive producer.

The films he has made have grossed more than US$19 billion, making him one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. Of the eight animated films that have grossed more than $1 billion, five of them are films executive produced by Lasseter. The films include Toy Story 3 (2010), the first animated film to pass $1 billion, Frozen (2013), the third highest-grossing animated film of all time, as well as Zootopia (2016), Finding Dory (2016), and Incredibles 2 (2018). Frozen also held the title of the highest grossing animated film of all time until 2019, and was the fifth highest grossing film of all time at the end of its theatrical run. He has won two Academy Awards, for Best Animated Short Film (for Tin Toy), as well as a Special Achievement Award (for Toy Story).

In November 2017, Lasseter took a six-month sabbatical from Pixar and Disney Animation after acknowledging what he called "missteps" in his behavior with employees. According to various news outlets, Lasseter had a history of alleged sexual misconduct toward employees. In June 2018, Disney announced that he would be leaving the company at the end of the year when his contract expired, but took on a consulting role until then. On January 9, 2019, Lasseter was hired to run Skydance Animation.

John Alan Lasseter was born January 12, 1957, in Hollywood, California. His mother, Jewell Mae (née Risley; 1918–2005), was an art teacher at Bell Gardens High School, and his father, Paul Eual Lasseter (1924–2011), was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership. Lasseter is a fraternal twin; his sister Johanna Lasseter-Curtis, who became a baker based in the Lake Tahoe area, is six minutes older.

Lasseter grew up in Whittier, California. His mother's profession contributed to his growing preoccupation with animation. He often drew cartoons during church services at the Church of Christ[clarification needed] church his family attended. As a child, Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. While in high school, he read The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. The book covered the history of Disney animation and explored the making of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, which made Lasseter realize he wanted to do animation himself. When he saw Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone, he finally made the decision that he should become an animator. He then read Preston Blair's book about animation, and made flipbooks based on Blair's walk cycles. One of his friends had a Super 8 camera that shot single frames, which was used to shoot some of his earlier animation efforts.

Lasseter heard of a new character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts (often abbreviated as 'CalArts') and decided to follow his dream of becoming an animator. His mother further encouraged him to take up a career in animation, and in 1975 he enrolled as the second student (Jerry Rees was the first) in the CalArts Character Animation program created by Disney animators Jack Hannah and T. Hee. Lasseter was taught by three members of Disney's Nine Old Men team of veteran animators—Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston—and his classmates included future animators and directors like Brad Bird, John Musker, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, and Chris Buck. During his time there, he produced two animated shorts—Lady and the Lamp (1979) and Nitemare (1980)—which each won the student Academy Award for Animation. While at CalArts, Lasseter first started working for the Walt Disney Company at Disneyland in Anaheim during summer breaks and got a job as a Jungle Cruise skipper, where he learned the basics of comedy and comic timing to entertain captive audiences on the ride.

Upon graduating in 1979, Lasseter immediately obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney Productions mostly due to his success with his student project, Lady and the Lamp. The studio had reviewed approximately 10,000 portfolios in the late 1970s in search of talent, then selected only about 150 candidates as apprentices, of which only about 45 were kept on permanently. In the fall of 1979, Disney animator Mel Shaw told the Los Angeles Times that "John's got an instinctive feel for character and movement and shows every indication of blossoming here at our studios ... In time, he'll make a fine contribution." At that same time, Lasseter worked on a sequence titled "The Emperor and the Nightingale" (based on The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen) for a Disney project called Musicana. Musicana was never released but eventually led to the development of Fantasia 2000 (1999).

However, Lasseter soon felt that something was missing: after 101 Dalmatians (1961), which in his opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau, he felt that the studio had lost momentum and was often repeating itself. Between 1980 and 1981, he coincidentally came across some video tapes from one of the then new computer-graphics conferences, who showed some of the very beginnings of computer animation, primarily floating spheres and such, which he experienced as a revelation. But it was not until shortly after, when he was invited by his friends Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer, while working on Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983), to come and see the first light cycle sequences for an upcoming film entitled Tron (1982), featuring state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery (CGI), that he saw the huge potential of this new technology in animation. Up to that time, the studio had used a multiplane camera to add depth to its animation. Lasseter realized that computers could be used to make films with three-dimensional backgrounds where traditionally animated characters could interact to add a new level of visually stunning depth that had not been possible before. He knew adding dimension to animation had been a longtime dream of animators, going back to Walt Disney.

Catmull later telephoned Smith that day and mentioned that Lasseter was not working at Disney. Smith told Catmull to put down the phone and hire Lasseter right now. Lasseter agreed instantly to work freelance with Catmull and his colleagues and joined them for a week of December 1983 on a project that resulted in their first computer animated short: The Adventures of André & Wally B., meant to prove it was possible to do character animation on a computer. After the short CGI film was presented at SIGGRAPH in the summer of 1984, Lasseter returned to Los Angeles with the hope of directing The Brave Little Toaster at Hyperion Pictures. He soon learned that funding had fallen through and called Catmull with the bad news. Catmull called back with a job offer, and Lasseter joined Lucasfilm as a full-time employee in October 1984 and moved to the Bay Area. After that, he worked with ILM on the special effects on Young Sherlock Holmes, where he made the first fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character, a knight composed of elements from a stained glass window. This effect was the first CGI character to be scanned and painted directly onto film using a laser. Lasseter and Catmull's collaboration, which has since lasted over thirty years, would ultimately result in Toy Story (1995), which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. Additionally, Lasseter created THX's robot mascot Tex. He made his first appearance in 1996 with the original theatrical release of Independence Day. Since then, Tex has appeared in some THX trailers.

Due to George Lucas's financially crippling divorce, he was forced to sell off Lucasfilm Computer Graphics, by this time renamed the Pixar Graphics Group, founded by Smith and Catmull, with Lasseter as one of the founding employees. It was spun off as a separate corporation with Steve Jobs as its majority shareholder in 1986. Over the next 10 years, Pixar evolved from a computer company that did animation work on the side into an animation studio. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. As well as Toy Story, he also personally directed A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Cars (2006), and Cars 2 (2011). He has won two Academy Awards, for Animated Short Film (Tin Toy), as well as a Special Achievement Award (Toy Story). Lasseter has been nominated on four other occasions—in the category of Animated Feature, for both Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Cars, in the Original Screenplay category for Toy Story and in the Animated Short category for Luxo, Jr. (1986)—while the short Knick Knack (1989) was selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time. In 2008, he was honored with the Winsor McCay Award, the lifetime achievement award for animators.

Disney announced that it would be purchasing Pixar in January 2006, and Lasseter was named the chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Feature Animation, the latter of which he renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios. Lasseter was also named principal creative adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he helped design attractions for Disney Parks. He oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' films and associated projects as executive producer. He reported directly to Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger, bypassing Disney's studio and theme park executives. He also received green-light power on films with Roy E. Disney's consent.

Year	Character	Title
2011	John Lassetire	Cars 2
2011	Gambler Ferrari	Cars 2
1999	Blue Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot	Toy Story 2
1999	Director	Toy Story 2
1998	Harry	A Bug's Life
1998	Director	A Bug's Life
1998	Singing Grasshopper 1	A Bug's Life
1995	TV Announcer 2	Toy Story