Brett Ratner

Biography

Brett Ratner (born in Miami Beach in 1969) is an American film producer and director who first made his name directing music videos. His career, built mostly from the late 1990s onward, places him among the commercially oriented Hollywood filmmakers who worked across action comedy, genre pictures and studio blockbusters. He matters chiefly for Rush Hour, whose pairing of two contrasting leads became a durable formula at the box office.

Ratner grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Miami Beach, with Cuban roots on his mother's side. He studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated in 1990. He has said that Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull inspired him to pursue film. While still a student he made the short Whatever Happened to Mason Reese?, whose premiere drew the attention of the rap group Public Enemy, who asked him to make their videos. He went on to direct clips for artists including Redman, LL Cool J and Wu-Tang Clan, and later for Mariah Carey, Madonna, Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus.

His feature debut came with Money Talks (1997), an action comedy starring Chris Tucker, with whom he would work again. The following year he directed Rush Hour (1998), starring Jackie Chan and Tucker, which became the highest-grossing film of its studio and the biggest comedy of its era. A sequel followed in 2001. He then made The Family Man (2000), starring Nicolas Cage, and Red Dragon (2002), a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs centred on Hannibal Lecter. In 2004 he directed After the Sunset, with Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek, and in 2006 X-Men: The Last Stand. In 2011 he directed Tower Heist, with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, a project that began as Murphy's idea called Trump Heist, although the references to Trump were removed.

As a producer, he was involved in Horrible Bosses (2011) and Mirror Mirror (2012), and he was executive producer of the television series Prison Break. In 2012 he co-founded RatPac Entertainment with Australian media executive James Packer, a company that financed and co-produced films with Warner Bros. In 2011 the Academy chose him to produce the 84th Academy Awards, but he resigned shortly afterwards over a controversial remark about rehearsals and later apologised.

From 2017 his career was overshadowed by multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault, which he has denied. Warner Bros. distanced itself from him, RatPac did not renew its deal with the studio in 2018, and Ratner subsequently relocated to Israel. In 2026 he released Melania, about First Lady Melania Trump, which drew overwhelmingly negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office.

Key films

• Rush Hour (1998): the film that brought him to a wide audience and launched an action comedy franchise.
• Red Dragon (2002): a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs centred on Hannibal Lecter.
• X-Men: The Last Stand (2006): one of the entries in Marvel's mutant franchise, which he directed.
• Tower Heist (2011): a heist comedy starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy.