Foreign Name: Miyazaki Hayao

Nationality: Japan

Place of birth: Tokyo, Japan

Date of Birth: January 5, 1941

Occupation: animation director

Graduated: Gakushuin University in Tokyo, Japan

Representative works: "Nausicaa", "Laputa", "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away Spirited Away"

The director, producer, animator, and storyteller Hayao Miyazaki was the leader of one of the most successful animated motion picture studios in the world, Studio Ghibli. The studio arose out of his success with the motion picture Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind , and its continued success was wholly dependent on the motion pictures that he wrote and directed. In the 1990s he created the most successful films in the history of Japan, setting numerous box-office records. While his films were already popular among anime enthusiasts worldwide, a distribution deal with Disney Studios in 1996 brought several of Miyazaki's works to broader audiences; he had established himself as an innovator and artist at least equal in stature to Walt Disney himself. As a leader Miyazaki attracted to his productions some of Japan's finest writers, artists, directors, and producers, as well as the outstanding composer Joe Hisaishi, whose scores for Miyazaki's films became classics themselves.