Personal life

Winter was born in London, England. His mother, Gregg Mayer, is a New York-born American who was a former Martha Graham dancer and founded a modern-dance company in London in the mid-1960s. His father, Ross Albert Winter, was Australian and danced with Winter's mother's troupe. Winter received training in dance as a child. When he was five, his family moved to Missouri, where his father ran the Mid-American Dance Company, while his mother taught dance at Washington University in St. Louis. The two divorced in 1973.

Winter is Jewish. He was married to Sonya Dawson with whom he had a son, Leroy Winter, born in 1998. Winter maintains dual British and American citizenship.

Career

Winter moved to New York City in 1978 and began performing as an actor on and off Broadway. In 1983, he was accepted into the Film School at New York University (NYU). While at college, he met fellow aspiring filmmaker Tom Stern. The two collaborated on a number of 16mm short films and both graduated with honours.

As an actor, Winter spent many years on Broadway with supporting roles in productions of The King and I, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and the American premiere of Simon Gray's Close of Play at the Manhattan Theatre Club. After completing NYU film school, he and Tom Stern moved out to Hollywood, where the two wrote and directed a number of short films and music videos. Winter continued to find work as an actor, landing notable roles in such big productions as The Lost Boys and Rosalie Goes Shopping. In 1989, Winter found international success when he co-starred with Keanu Reeves as Bill S. Preston in the smash-hit comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

Following the success of Bill & Ted, Winter and creative collaborators Tom Stern and Tim Burns were hired to develop a sketch comedy show for MTV. The result, 1991's The Idiot Box, was a success for the network, but the channel's budgetary problems prevented them from filming additional seasons, and it was canceled after six episodes. Winter, Stern and Burns accepted a $12 million deal from 20th Century Fox to film their own feature film, which would end up becoming 1993's Freaked. While the film was never widely released, despite positive reviews from The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly, Freaked went on to become a cult favourite, through festivals, TV and DVD, and was cited by Entertainment Weekly, on their list of Top Ten Comedies of the Nineties.

Winter did not return to directing until 1999, when he filmed Fever. The film was shown at film festivals worldwide, including Official Selection in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. New York Daily News praised the film, calling it "a claustrophobic mind bender. Winter sustains an aura of creepiness worthy of Roman Polanski."

Winter works between his American home base and London, where he directs music videos and commercials. Highlights of his work include directing several installments of the popular Peugeot Thelma & Louise advertising campaign, as well as campaigns for Ford, the global launch of the all CGI Tony the Tiger for Frosties, and award-winning spots for Supercuts and Google in the United States.

In 2007, Winter returned to acting after a nearly 14-year absence in a guest spot on the crime series Bones. He has a recurring role as the voice of "King Mole Man" on the Adult Swim show, Saul of the Mole Men, which was created by long-time friend Tom Stern, and has directed the live-action adaptation of the hit Cartoon Network series Ben 10, which aired in November 2007 and garnered the highest ratings in Cartoon Network history. He directed its sequel, Ben 10: Alien Swarm which aired on Cartoon Network in November 2009 and captured over 16 million viewers in its premiere weekend. He has reportedly been chosen to write the screenplay for the Howard Stern-produced remake of Rock 'n' Roll High School. His latest project is a 3D-remake of the 1987 horror film The Gate which was scheduled for release in 2011.

In April 2011, Winter's Bill & Ted co-star Keanu Reeves confirmed that a third installment of the film series was underway. Winter's confirmed work on Bill & Ted 3 was still in progress in a 2014 article on the original film's 25th anniversary.

In October 2011, he made an appearance on the eighth-season finale That Metal Show, attempting to stump Eddie Trunk.

In July 2015, Winter began work on a biographical documentary of the rock guitarist and composer Frank Zappa. The Zappa Family Trust publicly gave its approval to Winter's plans for the film.

Filmography

As director

Theatrical feature films

• Freaked (1993) (also co-writer, co-producer and actor )
• Fever (1999) (also writer and actor )
• Downloaded (2012)
• Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and the Silk Road (premiered at film festivals beginning March 2015)
• Smosh: The Movie (2015)

TV and home video

• NYU Sight & Sound Project (mid-1980s) (student short film, released on DVD, also actor)
• Squeal of Death (1985) (short film, aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable, released on VHS and DVD, also co-writer and actor)
• Aisles of Doom (1989) (short film, aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable, released on VHS, also co-writer and actor )
• Stuart S. Shapiro's Impact Video Magazine (1989), includes, among others, Entering Texas a.k.a. Bar-B-Que Movie (VHS, also actor)
• Howie Meets the Ghost of Environmental Disasters Yet to Come (1990) (short film for the Nigel Dick-directed Save the Planet: A CBS/Hard Rock Cafe Special, aired on CBS April 20, 1990, also actor)
• The Idiot Box (1991) (MTV show, also co-writer and actor)
• Meals on Wheels (1991 or 1992) (short film for The Playboy Channel's Inside Out late night anthology series, also co-writer and actor)
• Tabla Beat Science: Talamanam Sound Clash (2003) (concert DVD, co-directed by Zane Vella)
• Dirty Famous (2005) (VH1 pilot)
• Ben 10: Race Against Time (2007) (Cartoon Network film, also executive producer and actor )
• Ben 10: Alien Swarm (2009) (Cartoon Network film, also executive producer and voice actor )
• Jimmy Kimmel Live! segments
• The Andy Milonakis Show
• Level Up (2012)

Music videos

• Red Hot Chili Peppers — "Knock Me Down" (1989)
• Ice Cube — "Who's the Mack?" (1990)
• Human Radio — "Me & Elvis" (1990)
• Extreme — "Decadence Dance" (1990)
• Ronny Jordan — "The Jackal" (1993)
• Helmet — "Milquetoast" (1994)
• Helmet — "Wilma's Rainbow" (1994)
• Bomb the Bass feat. Carlton — "1 to 1 Religion" (1995)
• Foetus — "Verklemmt" (1995)
• Axiom Funk — "If 6 Was 9" (1996)
• Bomb the Bass feat. Justin Warfield — "Bug Powder Dust" (1997)
• Helmet — "Exactly What You Wanted" (1997)

As actor in works by other directors

Theatrical feature films

• Death Wish 3 (1985) — Hermosa
• Medium Rare (1987) —
• The Lost Boys (1987) — Marko
• Haunted Summer (1988) — Dr. John Polidori
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) — Bill S. Preston, Esq.
• Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989) — Schatzi Greenspace
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) — Bill S. Preston, Esq./Granny Preston/Evil Robot Bill
• The Borrowers (1997) — TV Gangster
• Grand Piano (2014) — Assistant

TV

• The Equalizer episode "Mama's Boy" (1985) — Jeffrey
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1990) — Bill S. Preston, Esq. (voice)
• Sex, Shock and Censorship in the 90's (1993) — Stinx on Ice
• Bones episode "The Girl in the Gator" (2007) — Monte Gold
• Saul of the Mole Men 5 episodes (2007) — King Mole Man (voice)
• Robot Chicken 1 episode (2012) — Bill S. Preston, Esq., Steve Burns (voice)

Music videos

• Red Hot Chili Peppers — "Higher Ground" (1989)
• Red Hot Chili Peppers — "Knock Me Down" (1989)
• Brother Cane — "Hard Act to Follow" (1994)

Notes

• A^ Co-directed by Tom Stern.
• B^ Bootsy Collins (lead vocals, space bass), DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight (guitar), Nicky Skopelitis (guitar), Robert Musso (backwards guitar), Buckethead (intro guitar) and Lili Haydn (violin).

[ Source: Wikipedia ]