Robert Ralph Minkoff is an American filmmaker. He is known for directing the Academy Award-winning Disney animated featureThe Lion King, along with directing Stuart Little, Stuart Little 2, The Haunted Mansion, and Mr. Peabody & Sherman.
Early life
Minkoff was born to a Jewish family in Palo Alto, California to Jack Robert Minkoff and Tola Fay Minkoff. He studied at Palo Alto High School and graduated from California Institute of the Arts in the early 1980s in the Character Animation department. While he was working his way through CalArts, he was hired by Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1983 as an in-between artist for The Black Cauldron. He was then a supervising animator for The Great Mouse Detective, before being a character designer for The Brave Little Toaster. He also wrote the song "Good Company" for Oliver & Company, before becoming a character animator for The Little Mermaid. He then became a director for two Roger Rabbit shorts called Tummy Trouble and Roller Coaster Rabbit and was a part of a pre-production script development for Beauty and the Beast. He also directed a Mickey Mouse short, which was shown at Disney-MGM Studios, called Mickey's Audition.
Career
Minkoff got his big break when he directed the Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film The Lion King alongside Roger Allers. Since then, he has directed his first live-action movies: Stuart LittleStuart Little 2, which were a mix of live action and computer animation, and then some fully live action movies like The Haunted Mansion, The Forbidden Kingdom and Flypaper. He participates as a member of the jury for the NYICFF, a local New York Cityfilm festival dedicated to screening films for children between the ages of 3 and 18. He directed DreamWorks Animation's computer-animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman. He is also attached to direct the fantasy action adventureChinese Odyssey. As of 2014, he is producing Blazing Samurai, an animated family film inspired by Blazing Saddles and scheduled for a 2017 release. Minkoff is also a director on the 2018 animated Netflix original animated series of the late Anna Dewdney picture book franchise Llama Llama, overseeing all aspects of production.
Personal life
Minkoff met Crystal Kung at a party in his office in 2003, and they attended the Finding Nemo premiere as their first date. Minkoff proposed to her on Valentine's Day 2006, and they married on September 29, 2007. They have a son named Max and a daughter named Zoe. Kung is a 76th-generation descendant of Confucius. Her brother is Jeffrey Kung, a Chinese singer and radio VJ.
