20 Things You Didn't Know About Christopher Nolan
17. He Started Making Films At 7 Years Old
Long before Nolan began working on features, he started out as a young filmmaker at the mere age of seven, having been influenced by sci-fi classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and later Blade Runner.
He borrowed his father's Super 8 camera to make a stop-motion animated Star Wars homage called "Space Wars," casting his brother and now-frequent collaborator Jonathan in the movie while building sets from "clay, flour, egg boxes, and toilet rolls."
At age eleven, Christopher decided upon a future in the film industry, and as a teenager living in Chicago would make films with friends Adrien and Roko Belic.
In his early twenties, he and Roko teamed up to document a safari across four African countries, and in 1999 - on the eve of Nolan's Hollywood breakthrough - he received an editorial credit on the brothers' Oscar-nominated short film Genghis Blues.