Byron Howard


Byron P. Howard is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, story artist and occasional voice actor at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is best known as the co-director of Bolt, Tangled, and Zootopia, and a supervising animator on Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Tangled and won an Oscar for Zootopia.

Early life and education

Howard was born in Misawa, Japan, and raised in both the outskirts of Philadelphia and Issaquah, Washington, United States, in a middle-class family. He attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

Career

Howard began his career at Disney in 1994, working as an animator on films including Pocahontas, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear. He was nominated for a 2003 Annie Award for Character Animation for Brother Bear.
The first film Howard directed was the animated Disney film Bolt, which was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In his role as co-director of the film with Chris Williams, Howard focused on character design and animation. Howard went on to direct the animated Disney films Tangled and Zootopia. He and Greno also co-directed and wrote the animated short Tangled Ever After, which features supporting characters from Tangled and showed in theaters before the 2012 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast.
, Howard is working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on an original animated film. Howard will co-direct the film, tentatively titled Encanto, alongside Zootopia co-director Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith, while Miranda will write songs for the project, which will center on a girl from a magical Colombian family who lacks magic herself.
In 2009, Howard became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Personal life

In the Fusion documentary Imagining Zootopia, Howard mentioned he is openly gay and has been married since 1988.

Filmography

Awards

;Golden Globe Award
;Academy Award