John Waters

John Waters born 22 April 1946

John Waters is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, personality, visual artist and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films. He is recognisable by his trademark pencil-thin moustache.

Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. His boyhood friend and muse Glenn Milstead, later known as Divine, also lived in Baltimore County, Maryland, a short distance away.

The movie Lili inspired an interest in puppets in the seven-year-old Waters, who proceeded to stage violent versions of Punch and Judy for children's birthday parties. Biographer Robert L. Pela says that Waters' mother believes the puppets in Lili had the greatest influence on Waters' subsequent career (though Pela believes tacky films at a local drive-in, which the young Waters watched from a distance through binoculars, had a greater effect).

For his sixteenth birthday, Waters received an 8mm movie camera from his grandmother.

Waters was a student at New York University (NYU). The school, however, was not what Waters had in mind. Uninterested in cinema as art, he was more interested in cinemas as trash. In January 1966, Waters and some friends were caught smoking marijuana on the grounds; they were soon expelled. Waters returned to Baltimore, where he began work on his second film, Eat Your Makeup, which was filmed that year. Waters' films would become Divine's primary star vehicles. Waters' early films were all shot in the Baltimore area with his company of local actors, the Dreamlanders. In addition to Divine, the group included Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, and others. These early films were among the first picked up for distribution by the fledgling New Line Cinema, premiering in Baltimore theatres.

Waters' early campy movies present filthily lovable characters in outrageous situations with hyperbolic dialogue. His early films, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, which he labelled the Trash Trilogy, pushed hard at the boundaries of conventional propriety and movie censorship. A particularly notorious scene from Pink Flamingos, gratuitiously added to the film's end, featured (in one continuous take without special effects) a small dog defecating and Divine eating the result.

Unexpectedly, both Waters and Divine were destined to move nearer to the mainstream. Waters' 1981 film Polyester starred Divine opposite former teen idol Tab Hunter. Since then, his films have become less controversial and more mainstream, although works such as Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Serial Mom still retain his trademark inventiveness and twisted Americana.

The film Hairspray was turned into a hit Broadway musical which swept the 2003 Tony Awards, followed by a successful film.

A musical version of Waters' Cry-Baby opened on Broadway in April 2008.

Waters' most recent film, A Dirty Shame, is a return to his earlier, more controversial work of the 1970s. He also had a cameo in Jackass: Number Two, which starred Dirty Shame co-star Johnny Knoxville.

Waters is currently a professor of cinema and subcultural studies at the European Graduate School.

Waters is an avid supporter of gay rights and gay pride.