Jim Jarmusch Biography

Independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch began his career with critical acclaim for his 1984 feature Stranger Than Paradise.

He grew up in a suburb of Akron, Ohio, and earned his undergraduate degree from New York’s Columbia University in 1975, after spending his final term in Paris.

He studied film at New York University for four years, and his first feature was his student project, 1980’s Permanent Vacation.

His next film, Strange Than Paradise, won awards at Cannes and helped bump independent films into the spotlight.

Since then, Jarmusch has maintained his independence and created a body of work with a recognizable visual style (urban grit, often in black and white), driven less by traditional narrative than by relationships between displaced characters.

He’s also known for his movies with multiple narratives or vignettes, such as Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (1986-2003), and for hiring musicians as actors, including Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer and Tom Waits.

Jarmusch’s other films include Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1995, starring Johnny Depp), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999, starring Forest Whitaker), Broken Flowers (2005, starring Bill Murray), Only Lovers Left Alive (2014, starring Tilda Swinton) and The Dead Don’t Die (2019, starring Adam Driver and Bill Murray).