Background and career
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), and Female Trouble (1974). Waters wrote and directed the comedy film Hairspray (1988), which was later adapted into a hit Broadway musical and a 2007 musical film. His other films include Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), and Cecil B. Demented (2000), each containing elements of post-modern comedy and surrealism. As an actor, Waters has appeared in the films Sweet and Lowdown (1999), Mangus! (2011), Excision (2012), and Suburban Gothic (2014), as well as the Child's Play franchise with the film Seed of Chucky (2004) and the third season of the television series Chucky (2024). He hosted and produced the television series John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You (2006). Waters also works as a visual artist and across different media, such as installations, photography, and sculpture. He was twice nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album, narrating his audiobooks Carsick (2015) and Mr. Know-It-All (2020). Waters was named an officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2018. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.
Waters was born on April 22, 1946, in Baltimore, Maryland, one of four children born to Patricia Ann (née Whitaker) and John Samuel Waters, a manufacturer of fire-protection equipment. He was raised Catholic by his mother, though his father was not Catholic. Through his mother, who immigrated as a child to the United States from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, he is the third great-grandson of George P. Whitaker of the Whitaker iron family. Waters grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. His boyhood friend and muse, Glenn Milstead, later known as Divine, also lived in Lutherville. Waters lived at 313 Morris Avenue in Lutherville from his early teenage years until he moved out in his early twenties. Waters and Milstead shot many of their early films at the house, dubbing the front lawn the "Dreamland Lot". The film Lili inspired an interest in puppets in the seven-year-old Waters, who proceeded to stage violent versions of Punch and Judy for children's birthday parties. Biographer Robrt L. Pela says that Waters's mother believes the puppets in Lili had the greatest influence on Waters's subsequent career (though Pela believes tacky films at a local drive-in, which the young Waters watched from a distance through binoculars, had a greater effect). Cry-Baby was also a product of Waters's boyhood, because of his fascination as a seven-year-old with the "drapes" then receiving intense news coverage because of the murder of Carolyn Wasilewski, a young "drapette", and his admiration for a young man living across the street who had a hot rod. Waters was privately educated at the Calvert School in Baltimore. After attending Towson Jr. High School in nearby Towson, and Calvert Hall College High School, he graduated from Boys' Latin School of Maryland. While still a teen, he made frequent trips into downtown Baltimore to visit Martick's, a beatnik bar, where he and Milstead met many of their later film collaborators. He was underage and could not enter the bar proper, but loitered in the adjacent alley, where he relied on older patrons to slip him drinks.
Waters's first short film was Hag in a Black Leather Jacket. MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939) had a profound effect on Waters's creative mind. He said about it:
I was always drawn to forbidden subject matter in the very, very beginning. The Wizard of Oz opened me up because it was one of the first movies I ever saw. It opened me up to villainy, to screenwriting, to costumes. And great dialogue. I think the witch has great, great dialogue. Waters has stated that he takes an equal amount of joy and influence from highbrow "art" films and sleazy exploitation films. Waters once said, "To understand bad taste one must have very good taste." In January 1966, Waters and some friends were caught smoking marijuana on the grounds of New York University, and he was soon kicked out of his dormitory. He returned to Baltimore, where he completed his next two short films, Roman Candles and Eat Your Makeup. They were followed by the feature-length films Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs. Waters became known as an underground filmmaker in the 1970s. Waters's films became Divine's primary star vehicles. All of Waters's early films were shot in the Baltimore area with his company of local actors, the Dreamlanders—which, in addition to Divine, included Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Susan Walsh, and others. Waters met Edith Massey while she was a bartender at Pete's Hotel. Waters's early campy movies present exaggerated characters in outrageous situations with hyperbolic dialogue. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, which he labeled the Trash Trilogy, pushed hard at the boundaries of conventional propriety and censorship.
Waters's 1981 film Polyester starred Divine opposite former teen idol Tab Hunter. It was the first time that Waters was not the primary camera operator for his own work, as he had started collaborating with local film student David Insley. Since then, his films have become less controversial and more mainstream, although works such as Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker and Cecil B. Demented still retain his trademark inventiveness. Hairspray became a hit Broadway musical that swept the 2003 Tony Awards; and a film adaptation of the Broadway musical was released in theaters on July 20, 2007, to positive reviews and commercial success. Cry-Baby, itself a musical, also became a Broadway musical. In 2004, the NC-17-rated A Dirty Shame marked a return to Waters's earlier, more controversial work of the 1970s. Having received mixed reviews and bombing at the box-office, it is his last film so far. In 2007, Waters became the host ("The Groom Reaper") of 'Til Death Do Us Part, a program on America's Court TV network. In 2008, he planned to make a children's Christmas film, Fruitcake starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey. Filming was set for November 2008, but the project was shelved in January 2009. Waters has been open about financing problems for his movies. In 2010, Waters told the Chicago Tribune that "Independent films that cost $5 million are very hard to get made. I sold the idea, got a development deal, got paid a great salary to write it—and now the company is no longer around, which is the case with many independent film companies these days." In 2017, he stated that "they all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again." In October 2022, it was announced that Waters will adapt his novel, Liarmouth, into a film. Village Roadshow Pictures was set to produce, with Waters writing and directing. However, in November 2024, it was reported that the film was "no longer happening". Waters has often created characters with alliterated names for his films, such as Corny Collins, Cuddles Kovinsky, Donald and Donna Dasher, Dawn Davenport, Fat Fuck Frank, Francine Fishpaw, Link Larkin, Motormouth Maybelle, Mole McHenry, Penny and Prudy Pingleton, Ramona Ricketts, Sandy Sandstone, Sylvia Stickles, Todd Tomorrow, Tracy Turnblad, Ursula Udders, Wade Walker and Wanda Woodward. On September 18, 2023, Waters was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dreamlanders members Ricki Lake and Mink Stole were among the guest speakers.
Waters is a bibliophile, with a collection of over 8,000 books. In 2011, during a visit to the Waters house in Baltimore, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson observed:
