Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American screenwriter and director known for films that examine fame, sexuality, and the lives of people on the periphery of mainstream society. His notable movies include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far from Heaven (2002), I’m Not There (2007), Carol (2015), and May December (2023).

Education and first film

Haynes graduated from Brown University in 1985 with a B.A. in art and semiotics. In 1987 he earned attention for Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a short film he wrote and directed that focused on singer Karen Carpenter’s battle with, and subsequent death from, anorexia nervosa. The film was noted for its postmodern approach, mixing news footage and documentary-style interviews with reenactments of scenes from Carpenter’s life—staged with Barbie dolls playing the roles of Carpenter and her brother, Richard. It was pulled from distribution, however, when Richard Carpenter sued Haynes for illegal use of music by his and Karen’s band, the Carpenters.

Poison, Safe, and Velvet Goldmine

For his first full-length film, Poison (1991), Haynes intertwined three narratives inspired by the writings of Jean Genet. The film proved controversial, not simply because it explored sexual themes, including a storyline about a gay man in prison, but because it received National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding at a time when the agency was under attack from conservative groups for using public funds to support sexually explicit works. Haynes won further recognition for Safe (1995), a subtly unsettling depiction of a suburban woman (played by Julianne Moore) who believes she has become allergic to her environment. It was followed by Velvet Goldmine (1998), a multifaceted treatment of celebrity in the glam-rock era.

Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, and Mildred Pierce

In Far from Heaven (2002), Haynes re-created the style of a Douglas Sirk melodrama to tell the tale of a seemingly perfect married couple in 1950s suburbia whose relationship troubles surface when the wife (Moore) discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) has been having homosexual urges. The film enjoyed substantial acclaim; Haynes was nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay, and he received best director awards from several critics’ groups. His next film was I’m Not There (2007), an unorthodox biography of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, in which various actors (including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger) played characters representing Dylan at different stages of his life. Haynes later cowrote and directed the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), based on James M. Cain’s novel of the same name and starring Kate Winslet as the beleaguered title character, a divorced mother in 1930s Los Angeles.

Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, and The Velvet Underground

In 2015 Haynes released Carol, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt. The critically acclaimed drama is set in the 1950s, and it centers on the romantic relationship between a female store clerk (Rooney Mara) and an older married woman (Blanchett). He followed with Wonderstruck (2017), which was based on the best-selling children’s book about two children living in different eras with a secret connection. Dark Waters, a fact-based legal thriller about a chemical company’s alleged pollution of a community, appeared in 2019. Two years later Haynes wrote and directed The Velvet Underground, a documentary about the seminal rock band.

May December

In 2023 Haynes directed May December, a fictionalized account of the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal of the 1990s. Letourneau was a white married mother and schoolteacher in her 30s who was convicted of the second-degree child rape of her 12-year-old Samoan American student Vili Fualaau. After serving seven years in prison, during which she gave birth to Fualaau’s child, Letourneau married Fualaau and had another child with him. Haynes’s film examines a similar relationship but 20 years after it became a tabloid scandal, with Moore playing a character based on Letourneau and Charles Melton playing her victimized student-turned-husband. Natalie Portman costars as an actress who meets Moore’s character to conduct research for a film based on the scandal. May December was as controversial as the case that inspired it, igniting discussions about gender, race, and class. Fualaau released a statement saying that he had not been contacted by the filmmakers at any point and that he was offended by the film, calling it “a ripoff of my original story.” (Letourneau, from whom Fualaau had separated in 2017, died from cancer in 2020.) Nonetheless, the film received mostly positive reviews, earning a nomination at the Cannes film festival for the Palme d’Or and an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. It also received four Golden Globe Award nominations, though its categorization as a comedy by the Golden Globes baffled many people.