Joel Coen

Joel Coen is an American filmmaker whose work with his younger brother, Ethan, includes *Fargo*, *The Big Lebowski* and *No Country for Old Men*. Born in Minneapolis in 1954, he grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and studied film at New York University. He and Ethan began making movies together as children, using a Super 8 camera to remake films they had seen on television.

Their first feature, *Blood Simple* (1984), is a Texas-set crime thriller in which a bar owner hires a private detective to investigate his wife. It also marked the screen debut of Frances McDormand, whom Joel married in 1984. The brothers followed it with the exuberant kidnapping comedy *Raising Arizona* (1987) and the Prohibition-era gangster film *Miller’s Crossing* (1990). Their next film, *Barton Fink* (1991), about a playwright struggling to write a Hollywood wrestling picture, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

For years, the brothers shared the writing credit while Joel was credited as director and Ethan as producer, although both worked closely on the films. They later took joint directing credits. They also edited several of their movies under the shared pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.

*Fargo* (1996) brought their Minnesota background to the screen through a botched kidnapping and a murder investigation led by police chief Marge Gunderson. Joel and Ethan won the Academy Award for original screenplay, while McDormand won best actress for playing Gunderson. In *The Big Lebowski* (1998), Jeff Bridges played Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, a Los Angeles bowler drawn into a case of mistaken identity. The film’s reputation grew substantially after its theatrical release.

The brothers adapted Homer’s *Odyssey* into the Depression-era Mississippi journey *O Brother, Where Art Thou?* (2000). Their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel *No Country for Old Men* (2007) won Academy Awards for best picture, directing and adapted screenplay. Later collaborations included *A Serious Man* (2009), set in a Minnesota Jewish community; *True Grit* (2010), adapted from Charles Portis’s novel; and *Inside Llewyn Davis* (2013), about a struggling folk singer in early-1960s Greenwich Village.

In 2021, Joel directed *The Tragedy of Macbeth* without Ethan, his first solo feature as director. Shot in black and white, the Shakespeare adaptation stars Denzel Washington as Macbeth and McDormand as Lady Macbeth. Its stark sets and concentrated cast made it visually distinct from the brothers’ sprawling ensemble films, while continuing Joel’s long-standing interest in characters whose plans collapse under forces they cannot control.