Laurent Tirard grew up admiring American films, such as those by Steven Spielberg. He studied film making at New York University, worked as a script reader for Warner Bros. studios, then became a journalist and worked for the French film magazine Studio for six years.
There, he conducted a series of interviews on film making which have been published as a book under the title Moviemakers' Mister Class: Private Lessons from the World's Foremost Directors. From Woody Allen to David Cronenberg, the Coen brothers to Lars Von Trier, all flam directors run up against the same essential concerns: how to direct actors, for example, or whether to pre-plan camera angles. In interviewing these and 16 other notable filmmakers, Tirard found notable affinities between seemingly dissimilar directors. The book has also been published in France, Canada, England, Italy, Spain and Brazil.
In 1997, he left the magazine and began writing scripts for film and television, while directing two short films, in 1999 and 2000. He wrote and directed his first feature, The Story of My Life, in 2004, co-wrote the hugely successful Prête-moi ta main (How to Get Married and Stay Single) for Alain Chabat in 2005, then wrote and directed his second film, Molière, the following year.
He is currently working on an adaptation of a famous French children's book Le Petit Nicolas, which he plans to begin filming in 2008.
