The opening weekend for The Odyssey was nothing short of epic. Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s nearly 3,000-year-old tale brought in $262.1 million worldwide, topping the global box office and surpassing the opening weekend of his previous blockbuster, Oppenheimer. He’s also the icon behind The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception. But Nolan was once deemed not talented enough for film school.
Born in London, Nolan fell in love with movies as a child and began making short videos with his action figures. By the time he was 10 or 11, “I knew I wanted to make films,” he recounted to The Telegraph. But when he tried to follow the traditional path into the industry, he was rejected.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to go to film school, it’s that film school didn’t want me,” Nolan said in 2017. “In the end, I don’t think I was cut out for film school.”
Instead of closing the door on his dream, Nolan pivoted to studying English literature at University College London, a decision he has since been credited with strengthening his screenwriting and deepening his understanding of language and metaphor. And looking back, that experience has also shaped his long-standing philosophy on failure.
