Douglas Eric Liman (; born July 24, 1965) is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing the films Swingers (1996), Go (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), American Made (2017), and Road House (2024).
Most of his career has been associated with the production company Hypnotic. He is co-owner with Dave Bartis, whom he met as an undergraduate at Brown University where they co-founded Brown Television (BTV) and the National Association of College Broadcasters (NACB).
Liman is on the advisory board of the Legal Action Center and the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School.
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Early life
Liman, who is Jewish, was born in New York City, the son of Ellen (née Fogelson), a painter and writer, and Arthur L. Liman, a lawyer.
Liman began making short films while still in junior high school and studied at International Center of Photography in New York City. While attending Brown University, he helped to co-found the student-run cable television station BTV and served as its first station manager. He also co-founded the NACB, the first trade association geared to student-staffed radio and television stations, in 1988.
Liman attended the graduate program at University of Southern California, where he was tapped to helm his first project in 1993, the comedy film Getting In.
Career
Liman's first major success was Swingers, released in 1996. The film, written by Jon Favreau and based on Favreau's life, is a comedy about struggling actors amid the L.A. club milieu. Liman raised the funding and the film was made on the cheap, starring Favreau and his friends (Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, and Patrick Van Horn), ultimately cost $250,000. The film was a critical success, and jump-started the careers of Liman and the featured actors. Liman sold the film to Miramax for $5.5 million.
Liman next directed Go (1999), which tracks the events of a drug deal gone wrong through three different points of view as plot lines diverge and reconverge; Liman was also the film's cinematographer. The film was a modest success, grossing $28.4 million worldwide against a $20 million budget, and garnered positive reviews from critics.
In 1999, Liman shot a commercial for Nike featuring Tiger Woods.
Liman next directed the 2002 action thriller The Bourne Identity starring Matt Damon, an adaptation of the 1980 Robert Ludlum novel. The film was a box office success, earning over $200 million, and began a Bourne film franchise that has since included four additional films. Liman directed only the first Bourne film, after a notoriously "chaotic" shoot disrupted his relationship with the studio. As he had personally acquired the rights to the franchise from Ludlum, he served as an executive producer for three of the four sequels (2004's The Bourne Supremacy, 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum and 2016's Jason Bourne).
Liman executive-produced and directed the first two episodes ("Premiere" and "The Model Home") of the successful Fox prime time drama The O.C. (2003–2007). Liman produced and directed a series of comedy shorts for the Chrysler Film Project and Cannes Film Festival entitled Indie Is Great.
Liman also directed Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), a romantic comedy about an increasingly distant married couple who come to fear their whole relationship was a lie after they discover they are both secretly assassins. The film was Liman's most commercially successful to date, and is well known for the off-screen romance that developed between stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie while making the film.
Filmography
Film
Director
Producer
Mail Order Wife (2004)
Executive producer
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
The Killing Floor (2007)
Jason Bourne (2016)
The Phantom (2021)
Documentary film
Reckoning with Torture (2016)
Justice (2023) (Also executive producer)
Television
TV movies