Pete Docter

Pete Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American animator, director, screenwriter, producer, and voice actor whose work has been central to Pixar’s feature-film history. Raised in Minnesota, he made amateur animated films as a child and studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1990, he joined Pixar, then a small computer-animation company, becoming its third animator after John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. Docter contributed story and animation work to Toy Story (1995), Pixar’s first feature film and the first fully computer-animated feature. He later worked on A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, while helping shape Pixar’s story-driven production culture. His first feature as director was Monsters, Inc. (2001), which he co-directed with David Silverman and Lee Unkrich. The film follows professional scarers Sulley and Mike in Monstropolis, where screams power the city; its plot changes when a human child, Boo, enters their world. For Up (2009), Docter directed with Bob Peterson. The film begins with the wordless account of Carl Fredricksen’s life with Ellie, then sends the widowed Carl toward Paradise Falls when he ties thousands of balloons to his house. Russell, a young Wilderness Explorer, becomes his accidental traveling companion. Up won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was also nominated for Best Picture, a rare achievement for an animated film. Docter returned to directing with Inside Out (2015), co-directed with Ronnie del Carmen. Set largely inside the mind of eleven-year-old Riley, it personifies her emotions as Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. Joy and Sadness are stranded outside Headquarters, forcing them to travel through Riley’s memory systems as her family adjusts to a move from Minnesota to San Francisco. The film won Docter his second Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2020, he co-directed Soul with Kemp Powers. The film follows middle-school band teacher Joe Gardner, whose long-awaited jazz performance is interrupted by an accident and an afterlife journey. Soul won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, giving Docter his third Oscar in that category. In June 2018, Pixar named him chief creative officer, succeeding John Lasseter. In that role, he has overseen the studio’s creative direction and helped introduce projects including Luca, Turning Red, and Elemental. His storytelling credits also include the original story for WALL-E and story work on Toy Story, while his directing films collectively earned three Best Animated Feature Oscars at the Academy Awards.