The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded

Now in its fifth edition, updated, & with more than 130 new entries—from Judd Apatow to Lena Horne—the classic, beloved film book is better than ever.

For thirty-five years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone), “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview), and “not only an indispensable book about cinema, but one of the most absurdly ambitious literary achievements of our time” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian). For this edition, Thomson has brought up to date and in some case recast the biographies, & has added new ones (Clive Owen, Scarlett Johansson, Jake Gyllenhaal, & Marion Cotillard, for example). The book now includes almost 1,500 entries, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long, every one a gem.

Here is a great, rare book that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, & nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, & passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker & film buff must own, from the man David Hare called “the most stimulating & thoughtful film critic now writing.”

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Since 1975, Thomson has been publishing & updating his essential “Biographical Dictionary of Film,” which is thick with pungent, opinionated surveys of filmmakers & actors. (Its latest edition, the sixth, was published in 2014.)