Background

Ethnicity: Tony Huston's father had English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, distant German, and very remote Portuguese, ancestry. His mother was of Italian descent.

Tony Huston was born on April 16, 1950, in Malibu, California, United States to the family of a director John Huston and a ballerina Enrica Soma. He was named after both grandfathers, paternal grandfather Walter Huston and maternal grandfather Anthony Soma. Tony was born only nine days after the death of his grandfather, Walter Huston. His father John moved the family to St. Clerans, Ireland, when Tony was a year old. He holds Irish citizenship, as his father had. His parents separated when he was a teenager and he and his mother and sister went to London.

Education

When in Ireland Huston attended a Christian Brothers Primary School at nearby Loughrea. After moving to London he finished at the excellent, ancient Westminster School. He later studied at University College London.

Career

Tony Huston played clarinet in a wind quintet for several years, dealt in primitive art and worked in the British film industry as a junior publicist and finally as a second assistant director. After his mother was killed in a car crash he worked as an assistant director and sometimes actor and turned to writing.

In collaboration with his father and sister, Huston wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of The Dead, a story by Irish author James Joyce. Having written several screenplays in the 1960s, this is considered Huston’s most notable screenwriting credit. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Subsequently, Tony Huston left the film industry. Since then he has worked as an attorney as well as breeding falcons, a lifelong passion, in New Mexico.

Achievements

• Tony Huston's work as a screenwriter received ambiguous reviews, but mostly because of the specifics of the original material he worked with and his works were generally warmly accepted. He also received wide recognition in falconry circles for his competence and experience in working with the birds.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The dead: A screenplay

    (A screenplay for the final film of legendary director Joh...)

    1986

• movie

  • Watch Curse Of The Swamp Creature

    (While searching for oil in the deadly swamplands of the F...)

    1966
  • Watch Wise Blood

    (In this acclaimed adaptation of the first novel by legend...)

    1979
  • Watch A Bullet for Pretty Boy

    (After serving four years of a six-year sentence on a mans...)

    1970
  • Watch Hellcats

    (The fiancée and the brother of a slain undercover cop pos...)

    1968
  • Watch The Dead

    (The final film of legendary director John Huston, based o...)

    1987
  • Watch Sidehackers

    (Motorcycle racer Rommel and his fiancée Rita become frien...)

    1969
  • Watch Strawberries Need Rain

    (Death (played by the late Les Tremayne) comes to take the...)

    1970
  • Watch Creature of Destruction

    (A mad stage hypnotist Dr. John Basso (Les Tremayne) rever...)

    1967
  • Outlaw Riders 1971

Views

Quotations: "The pleasure of working with a small masterpiece is that it keeps you on course. You always know where you're going."

"If you're the son of a general, it's tough being a second lieutenant if you're not ready to be a general."

"I had time to find myself. Dad said we're a family of late developers. My grandfather Walter didn't really hit his stride as an actor until he was in his mid-40s."

Personality

For nearly fifty years Tony Huston has been a passionate falconer. He learned falconry in Ireland, where the Huston family had a home for eighteen years. Subsequently, he flew his hawks at partridge in Norfolk, England, and red grouse on the Scottish moors before moving to Taos, New Mexico where he started duck hawking and making pilgrimages across the American west, camping in the wilderness and pulling his Airstream trailer from the Mexican to the Canadian border.

Interests

• clarinet, training falcons

• Writers

  James Joyce

• Music & Bands

  Roger Landes and Chipper Thompson

Connections

Tony Huston married to Lady Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley, a daughter of the Lord High Chamberlain of England, Lord Cholmondeley in 1978. The divorced in 1987. the have three children: Matthew Alec Huston, Laura Sybil Huston, and Jack Alexander Huston.

Father:

John Huston

Mother:

Enrica Soma

Grandfather:

Walter Huston

Sister:

Anjelica Huston

Brother:

Danny Huston

Sister:

Allegra Huston

ex-wife:

Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley

Son:

Matthew Alec Huston

dauhter:

Laura Sybil Huston

Son:

Jack Huston

colleague:

Robert F. Slatzer

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998
• John Huston: Essays on a Restless Director Years after his death, American filmmaker John Huston (1906–1987) remains an enigmatic and compelling figure. This wide-ranging collection of new essays encompasses a variety of topics relating to Huston’s lifestyle, political activities, and cinematic legacy.
  2010
• John Huston: A Biography The first major biography of the famous and controversial director John Huston, whose thirty-seven films are considered classics and garnered him fifteen Academy Award nominations and two wins.
  2015
• The Hustons: The Life and Times of a Hollywood Dynasty In this candid biography, Lawrence Grobel chronicles the remarkable story of the Huston family, which boasts three Oscar winners, from Walter to John to Anjelica, with particular attention to the rich career and tumultuous personal life of director/actor John Huston (1906-1987).
  2012