John Lasseter Net Worth: American film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, voice actor, and head of the animation at Skydance Animation, John Alan Lasseter, was born on January 12, 1957. Before this, he served as the principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering and the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios.
With The Walt Disney Company, Lasseter started as an animator in the industry. After being sacked from Disney for pushing computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on the company’s then-revolutionary usage of CGI animation. In 1986, Steve Jobs purchased the Graphics Group from the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, which later changed its name to Pixar.
As executive producer, Lasseter handled Pixar’s movies and related endeavors. He also directed Cars (2006), Cars 2, A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story (1995), and Toy Story 2 (1999). Lasseter served as executive producer for all of the movies and related projects produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios (and its offshoot Disneytoon Studios) from 2006 to 2018.
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John Lasseter’s Net Worth
John Lasseter is an American animator, director, screenwriter, and producer with a $100 million fortune. Lasseter is the founder of Skydance Animation and has held the positions of a chief creative officer at Pixar, Disneytoon, and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
He was also the Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering. John has produced more than 100 projects, including “Toy Story 3” (2010), “Frozen” (2013), “Zootopia” (2016), “Finding Dory” (2016), and “Incredibles 2” (2018), all of which have grossed over $1 billion. He has also directed the Pixar movies “Toy Story” (1995), “Toy Story 2” (1999), “A Bug’s Life” (1998), “Cars” (2006), and “Cars 2” (2011).
In November 2017, Lasseter took a leave of absence from Disney following allegations of sexual misconduct against him. John would “take a consulting role at The Walt Disney Organization through December 31, 2018, at which point he will be leaving the company,” according to a June 2018 Disney statement. He joined Skydance Animation in January 2019 and was appointed company CEO.
John Lasseter Early Life
On January 12, 1957, John Alan Lasseter was born in Hollywood, California. His mother Jewell taught high school art, while his father Paul managed the parts department at a car dealership.
Growing up in Whittier, California, with his fraternal twin Johanna, John developed an early interest in animation due to his mother’s line of work. Lasseter decided he wanted a profession in energy after reading “The Art of Animation” by Bob Thomas. He was the second student to enroll at the California Institute of Art’s brand-new Character Animation department, established by two Disney animators, T. Hee and Jack Hannah, in 1975.
Veteran Disney animators Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Eric Larson taught the course. John created the animated shorts “Lady and the Lamp” (1979) and “Nitemare” (1980), which both won Student Academy Awards for Animation while he was enrolled in the CalArts Character Animation school. Lasseter worked for the Walt Disney Company and served as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise during the summer months.
John Lasseter Career
Walt Disney Productions employed Lasseter as an animator following his graduation from CalArts. He became enthusiastic about the potential of computer animation in the early 1980s after watching some videos from computer graphics conferences. He and Glen Keane later collaborated on a short test film of “Where the Wild Things Are” that was computer animated. This infuriated their immediate supervisors, who promptly canceled the project and informed Lasseter that his position with Disney Studios had been terminated.
Later, he performed independent work for Ed Catmull of the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group on the organization’s first computer-animated short, “The Adventures of André & Wally B.” Lasseter started working for Lucasfilm full-time in October 1984. Later, he collaborated with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) on the special effects for “Young Sherlock Holmes,” producing the first-ever “entirely computer-generated photorealistic animated figure.”
Lasseter and Catmull created the first feature-length computer-animated movie in 1995 with “Toy Story.” Lucasfilm Computer Graphics, formerly Pixar Graphics Group, was sold by George Lucas following his divorce. In 1986, Steve Jobs, a co-founder of Apple, established Pixar as a distinct firm. Lasseter served as the executive producer of each Pixar movie while employed by the firm.
John Lasseter’s Personal Life
Three years after first meeting her at a computer graphics conference in San Francisco, John married Nancy Ann Tague in 1988. Sam, Paul, Jackson, Bennett, and Joey are their boys; their oldest son, Joey, is a child from a prior relationship with Nancy. The Lasseter Family Winery, situated in Glen Ellen, California, has been owned by the couple since 2002.
John has over 1,000 Hawaiian shirts in his collection, and he also collects vintage automobiles, which includes a 1952 Jaguar XK120. He received an honorary doctorate from Pepperdine University and delivered the commencement speech there in May 2009. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has received hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the efforts of John and Nancy, whose son Sam had diabetes as a young child.
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