Rob Minkoff
ROB MINKOFF
Date of Birth: August 11, 1962
Animation director Rob Minkoff was born and raised in Palo Alto, California. In his youth his interest in drawing and animation was magnified while watching his 8mm film collection, which included Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959). Slowing the films down, he studied the action one frame at a time. He furthered his personal education on the subject after discovering the book The Art of Walt Disney at a friend's house.
When his head wasn't swimming in animation, Rob worked in theater, performing for numerous groups including the Palo Alto Children's Theater, Theater Works and his high school dramatic group. Following graduation, the decision to attend CalArts in Valencia and pursue his dream of becoming an animator was coming into fruition.
In 1982, he served an internship at Disney and had a chance to train with one of the studio's legendary "nine old men," Eric Larson. A year later, Rob was hired by Disney and began to work on his first assignment, The Black Cauldron (1985), followed by The Great Mouse Detective (1986). The next few years he worked on various aspect of Disney's feature films such as developing and writing for a variety of animated features, including a song for Oliver & Company (1988), character designs for The Little Mermaid (1989), and an early treatment for Beauty and the Beast (1991).
He made his directing debut on a couple of animated shorts starring Roger Rabbit, such as Tummy Trouble followed by Roller Coaster Rabbit. He landed the chance to direct a feature film in the early 1990s with Disney's The Lion King (1994).
Following the success of The Lion King, Rob left Disney to work with Columbia where he released the popular Stuart Little films (1999 and 2002), based on a mouse who lives as an equal family member with a group of kindly humans. The films mix live action and computer animation.
His next few films were live action, including The Haunted Mansion (2003) starring Eddie Murphy; The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li; and Flypaper (2011) starring Patrick Dempsey and Ashley Judd. Rob returned to animation with Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014), a big screen adaptation of the cartoons that aired during the animated 1960s series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
He married Crystal Kung on September 29, 2007.
Filmography (director):
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)Flypaper (2011)
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Stuart Little 2 (2002)
Stuart Little (1999)
The Lion King (1994)