Constantine Alexander Payne net worth is $25 Million. Also know about Constantine Alexander Payne bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Constantine Alexander Payne Wiki Biography

Constantine Alexander Payne is a film director, producer and screenwriter born on 10^th February 1961 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He is best known for critically acclaimed films such as “Election” (1999), “Sideways” (2004), “The Descendants” (2011) and “Nebraska” (2013). Alexander has won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay twice, and has been three times nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.

Have you ever wondered how rich Alexander Payne is? According to sources it has been estimated that Alexander’s overall net worth is $25 million. Payne has acquired his wealth through directing quality movies, which mostly concentrated on one character’s transformation during a certain life crisis. His films have brought him several prestigious awards, thus increasing his net worth. Since he is still active in the film industry, his net worth continues to grow.

Alexander Payne was born the youngest of three sons in a family of Greek and German descent. He went to Dundee Elementary School and while attending Creighton Preparatory for high school, Payne wrote a humor column for a school newspaper and was the edited school yearbook. In 1979 he enrolled at Stanford University where he studied history and Spanish and while studying the latter, he also attended Spain’s University of Salamanca. After graduating, Payne decided to go to the University of California, Los Angeles’ prestigious film school, in order to pursue his career as a director, finally attaining his M.F.A. degree in 1990.

A year later, Payne’s thesis film “The Passion of Martin”(1990) was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and gained industry attention. This led to his first feature film, the controversial comedy “Citizen Ruth” (1996), for which Payne also wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Jim Taylor. Once again using his teamwork with Taylor, Payne wrote the script for his 1999 film “Election”, starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, which brought him an Academy Award nomination. These provided a good start to his net worth.

Three years later, he received positive critiques once again, for “About Schmidt” (2002), a movie dealing with the topic of aging with Jack Nicholson in the lead role. However, Alexander earned his first Academy Award and a Golden Globe in 2005, for his comedy-drama film “Sideways”. A huge success, this film received five Academy Award nominations in total. During the next few years, Payne directed “Paris, Je T’Aime”(2006) and produced and wrote several films including: “I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry”(2007), “King of California”(2007) and “Savages”(2007). All these added steadily to his net worth.

Payne also worked on television, as an executive producer of the “Hung” series. In 2011, he directed another one of his most notable films, “The Descendants”, which brought him even greater recognition, a number of accolades and another Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His film-making talent dazzled once again with the release of his family dramatic comedy “Nebraska” in 2013, and brought him Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, as well as an Independent Spirits Award for Best First Screenplay.

Alexander was chosen as a member of the Main Competition’s Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012 and two years later, the Location Managers Guild of America honored him with the Eva Monley Award. Of course, his net worth continued to rise!

When it comes to his personal life, Payne was married to Korean-Canadian actress Sandra Oh for three years, before separating in 2006. He is on the Board of Directors of “Film Streams”, Omaha non-profit film theater and recently helped preserve a historic film theater in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

IMDB Wikipedia $25 Million 1961 72nd Street (Manhattan) Academy Award Academy Award for Best Picture Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) Advance Publications Alexander Constantine Papadopoulos Alexander Papadopoulos Alexander Payne Alexander Payne Net Worth Associated Press Author Billy Wilder Bucky Chameleon Street Chicken Children’s Hospital & Medical Center Class ring Cleveland Colorado College Constantine Alexander Payne Council Bluffs Detroit Directors February 10 Federal Bureau of Investigation Film Film director Film producer Greek American Identity theft Iowa Jack Nicholson Jim Taylor (writer) Maryland Matthew Broderick Nebraska Omaha Plea Quentin Tarantino Reese Witherspoon Sandra Oh Sandra Oh (m. 2003–2006) Screenwriter Sundance Film Festival Television Producer The Coffee Table Coffee Table Book United States United States Military Academy United States of America

Constantine Alexander Payne Quick Info

Constantine Alexander Payne Trademarks

1. Features characters that endeavor for self-fulfillment and individualism (Sideways (2004), About Schmidt (2002), Nebraska (2013))).
2. His films often deal with a sense of loneliness depicted by the main character
3. His films often revolve around adultery in marriage and relationships
4. Frequently incoporates telephone monologues as a dramatic device
5. Frequently uses actual people in roles of minor characters in his movies (real life policemen for policemen, real life restaurant servers for servers, real life teachers for teachers)
6. Frequently casts Phil Reeves
7. Frequently films scenes at natural history museums
8. Often sets his films in and around Omaha, Nebraska

Constantine Alexander Payne Quotes

• It looks like a game of Battleship. I’ll have my computer backed to his computer, cords and cables going in all sorts of directions. It’s not the neatest setup, but it’s worked for us.
• I was so burned out with road trip movies that I needed a break from them. That’s why I delayed Nebraska and worked on The Descendants instead. Well into production, a friend of mine pointed out, “you know, this movie has a road trip in it as well” and I was like “shit!” I guess I have a type.
• Ann (Beeder) is my best friend from childhood. I live in L.A. and she lives in New York, but we try to coordinate our trips to Omaha to fall at the same time. When we get there, we always find an adventure for us to go on. The last one was buying King Fong’s, an old Chinese restaurant in downtown Omaha that once served as a brothel.
• [on Hitchcock’s Psycho] Can you imagine Psycho in color? There’s something chilling about that in black and white. You can’t think of it in color. It’s a different deal. It’s super cool.
• [asked about some non-American directors he admires] The Thai guy with the unpronounceable name [Apichatpong Weerasethakul], he’s good. Interesting rhythms. Weird. He has his own language. Um. Who else is good? One of the best films I’ve seen this century is an Uruguayan film from a few years ago called Whisky (2004). I’ve traditionally followed Pedro Almodóvar. Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) I think is the only true masterpiece we’ve had in the last how-many years. It’s a tremendous film.
• I don’t want everything to be about the fucking Oscars. Does it keep me in business? Yes. The thing I lament is that we see good films only in the light of whether they get an Oscar. Where are those films throughout the year? Not just eight of them bunched up at the end, expecting to gird for battle.
• [re I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)] “Chuck and Larry” was a disappointment. When Jim (Taylor) and I wrote the script, we went with a dark comedy approach. We knew when (Adam) Sandler was brought on board that he would toss out our work, bring his buddies on board, and turn it into a juvenile slapstick piece. That’s fine, but that’s not our work. About 5, maybe 10 percent of our script remained.
• One of cinema’s greatest uses or values lies not just in it’s ability to capture reality, but to capture or suggest dreams. And silent films excelled from the start in fully embracing the weirdness of real life and dream and how the two can be combined into a story, the likes of which I think, we’ve not seen in the talkies – a fuller, weirder totality of human experience.
• When I’m shooting I don’t care who the star is. I have an actor playing a part, and I’m serving the script, not serving anyone’s career. My hope is that, after twenty minutes, perhaps the audience forgets it is George Clooney or Jack Nicholson and just sees the character.
• It’s my hope that we’re getting into an era where the value of a film is based on its proximity to real life rather than its distance from it. To do that, you need actors – stars, basically – who don’t necessarily look like Ben Affleck.
• Where is it written that if you are not getting your money from a studio you have more freedom? If I had tried to make Sideways with independent funding I would have had to secure foreign presales and cast big stars in order to get my budget. This movie took a studio to say ‘We’re gambling on you. Cast whoever you want.’
• We don’t have movies about ourselves, and we don’t have a national film culture. It shouldn’t be an epic aspiration to make simple human stories, but it is.
• While accepting his Director of the Year award for Sideways (2004) at the Palm Spring Film Festival: “I thank you for this award, though I think there may be a problem with a world in which making small, human and humorous films is ‘an achievement.’ It should be the norm”.
• I want all of my films to belong to me. There is an audience out there for literate films – slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made. Which is why I want Sideways (2004) to succeed, to encourage other film-makers.
• When studios entrust big Hollywood blockbusters to strong, intelligent directors, like Steven Soderbergh or Sam Raimi [Spider-Mans 1 and 2] or Alfonso Cuarón [the latest Harry Potter], I say ‘God bless ’em’, because those films will have legs and might stand the test of time. But if they rely on just product, like two examples from this year, Van Helsing (2004) and Catwoman (2004) – I’m glad they tanked.
• [on casting] They [the studios] go through that process where they think you have to find the most famous people possible and then they go down the line. That’s a game I’m increasingly uninterested in – unless the most famous possible person also happens to be very correct in the part, like Jack Nicholson.
• [on Reese Witherspoon]: She has such intelligence and humor, so it was a joyous leap of faith. Working with her, I kept thinking of Holly Hunter, she is an actress who is equally at home in character roles and in leads and in comedy and in drama.  Reese has that kind of range, as an actress and as a human being.
• [on Reese Witherspoon in Election (1999)] She inhabited that role fully, but she can do all these other roles. You see a woman in her, not a girl. She’s going to be interesting for a long time.

Constantine Alexander Payne Important Facts

• Director Chris Columbus said Payne’s Sideways (2004) was “a 70s movie in contemporary times”.
• Worked with both Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd in Citizen Ruth (1996), and then years later with her father Bruce Dern in Nebraska (2013).
• Although he couldn’t imagine Psycho (1960) in color, because it’s much more chilling in black and white, the film was remade in color as Psycho (1998) to universal disapproval.
• During an interview to french site Télérama, he stated his desire to work with Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard, Bérénice Bejo and Jennifer Lawrence. [April 2014].
• All of his full-length feature films (thus not counting his segment on Paris, je t’aime (2006)) since About Schmidt (2002) have earned one of their male leads an Academy Award nomination: Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt (2002), Thomas Haden Church for Sideways (2004); George Clooney for The Descendants (2011), and Bruce Dern for Nebraska (2013).
• Everytime he was nominated for the Best Director Oscar, Martin Scorsese was nominated in the same category alongside him: first in 2005 when Payne was nominated for Sideways (2004) and Scorsese for The Aviator (2004), then in 2012 when Payne was nominated for The Descendants (2011) and Scorsese for Hugo (2011) and finally in 2014 when Payne was nominated for Nebraska (2013) and Scorsese for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
• A serious film buff and scholar, Payne paid to have the silent 1917 Chaplin/”Little Tramp” film short The Adventurer (1917) restored and shown at the Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy in 2013, where he also introduced it, in Italian and English. He had also shown the film over 40 years before on his own 8mm projector to his friends back in Omaha, Nebraska when he was growing up.
• Directed his first feature length film at the age of 35.
• Graduated film school at the age of 29.
• Directed 7 actors in Oscar nominated performances: Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, George Clooney, Bruce Dern, and June Squibb.
• Among his favorite filmmakers: Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Hal Ashby, Martin Scorsese and Sergio Leone.
• Member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Directors Branch) [2005-]
• One of his motivations to move the title character of About Schmidt (2002) from New York City in the novel to Payne’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska was as a tribute to the great history of “creative” people that hail from that small Midwestern city. Other famous people who are originally from Omaha include Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Montgomery Clift and Nick Nolte.
• Is a friend of David O. Russell.
• Did an uncredited polishing-up of the final draft of Meet the Parents (2000).
• Studied Spanish and History at Stanford.
• Is on the short list of directors who has final cut rights to his films.
• Owns the Winnebago driven by Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) in About Schmidt (2002).
• He grew up down the street from billionaire Warren Buffett.
• Graduated in 1990 from UCLA Filmschool with a MFA in Theater Arts.
• Graduate of Stanford University.
• His father is of Greek and German ancestry, and his mother is of Greek descent. His paternal grandfather, a Greek immigrant, changed the family surname from “Papadopoulos” to “Payne”.
• Studied at the University of Salamanca (Spain).
• Attended Creighton Prep High School in Omaha, Nebraska

Constantine Alexander Payne Filmography

Constantine Alexander Payne Awards