---
name: "Tom Ford"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/tom-ford"
roles: ["Director","Producer","Screenwriter"]
born: "27 August 1961"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 2
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T08:21:13.560490+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Tom Ford

Director and producer. Born 27 August 1961 in Austin, Texas, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Director, Producer, Screenwriter
- **Born:** 27 August 1961, Austin, Texas, USA
- **Active:** 2001–2016
- **Also known as:** Thomas Carlyle Ford
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 74 (1), 2010s 74 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318149, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1053530/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/120615

## Streaming the US now

- **Peacock:** [*Nocturnal Animals*](https://film.one/film/nocturnal-animals.md) (74)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Tom Ford

> Tom Ford makes carefully composed films about isolated people facing regret. We recommend his work for the performances and the suspense, though his writing can tell us too firmly what to think of his characters.

In *Nocturnal Animals* (2016), Amy Adams has to make a woman reading a book as compelling as the events on its pages. As Susan Morrow, she is reading a novel by her former husband, so every response also carries the weight of their shared past. Ford gives her a difficult job, and she is a reason to recommend the film. We were unsettled by the way each turn of the page brings Susan back to her former husband: the private business of reading becomes painful to watch.

Ford's debut, *A Single Man* (2009), adapted Christopher Isherwood; his second feature took its source from Austin Wright. Ford came from fashion, and his precise compositions make that background easy to spot. The strength of Colin Firth's performance in the debut also established acting as a reason to take Ford seriously. By *Nocturnal Animals*, he was using that formal control to manage several connected stories and changes of tone.

Editor Joan Sobel, composer Abel Korzeniowski and costume designer Arianne Phillips have each worked with Ford on both films. In *Nocturnal Animals*, the central problem for the editing is clear: Susan's reading must remain interesting beside events with much more immediate force. The alternation holds our attention, even when the connections between the stories become too insistent. Ford sustains the fear, but he sometimes seems unwilling to let us decide for ourselves what these people have done wrong.

The weaker Los Angeles scenes show what happens when that control becomes impatience with the characters. The art-world satire labels the people around Susan as empty too quickly, leaving Adams to supply emotional weight that ought to be shared. Her uncertainty is more interesting than the screenplay's firm judgements, and Ford, who also wrote it, deserves the criticism as much as the credit for giving her space to perform. The nastiness can be rather pleased with itself, too. Start with *Nocturnal Animals* when a cruel thriller is welcome and nobody needs cheering up.

## Biography

Tom Ford is an American fashion designer and film director. He was creative director at Gucci from 1994 to 2004 and at Yves Saint Laurent, before launching his own Tom Ford label in 2005.

Ford made his directorial debut with *A Single Man* (2009), which he also wrote and produced. The film starred Colin Firth and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He wrote, directed and produced his second feature, *Nocturnal Animals* (2016), starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (2)

### Performed in (1)

- *Zoolander* (2001), Fi1m 74, as Tom Ford — [page](https://film.one/film/zoolander.md)

### Directed (1) — the average rests on these

- *Nocturnal Animals* (2016), Fi1m 74, Director, Producer, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/nocturnal-animals.md)

## Also known for

- *A Single Man* (2009), Director, Screenplay

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tom-ford