Photo: Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Julie Taymor is a genuine visionary, and I don't use that word loosely. The mind behind the stage version of The Lion King reinvented what a Broadway spectacle could be, winning Tonys for both direction and costume design and collecting a MacArthur fellowship along the way. Born in Newton in 1952 and trained at Oberlin, she moves fluidly between theater, opera, and film, which is rare and tells me she sees storytelling as a single craft with many surfaces. I'm drawn to artists who design the whole world, not just stage it. A Disney Legend honor in 2017 feels like overdue recognition of someone who genuinely changed her field.
Overview
Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Julie Taymor
- Name (Japanese)
- ジュリー・テイモア
- Reading
- じゅりー・ていもあ
- Born
- December 15, 1952 (age 73)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Sagittarius / Dragon
- Origin
- Newton, Massachusetts, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- film director / screenwriter / costume designer / scenographer / film producer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Newton North High School
- University
- Oberlin College
Awards & achievements
- Laurence Olivier Awards
- 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1991 MacArthur Fellows Program
- 1993 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction, or Reality Programming
- 1998 Tony Award for Best Costume Design
- 1998 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
- Fulbright Scholarship
- 2017 Disney Legends
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Film director — see all → · Screenwriter — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.