Roger Ebert Biography Quotes 34 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Roger Joseph Ebert was born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois. He grew up in a Midwestern college town that cultivated his love of reading, newspapers, and movies. As a teenager he wrote for local publications, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign he became editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Illini. There he sharpened his reporting and criticism, developing the clear, conversational style that would later define his voice. After graduating in 1964, he spent a year at the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship. He briefly began graduate study in the United States before turning decisively to journalism, the profession that would make him one of the most recognizable critics in American culture.

Chicago Sun-Times and the Rise of a Critic
Ebert joined the Chicago Sun-Times in the mid-1960s and in 1967 was named its film critic, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Writing with a four-star scale and a commitment to clarity, he approached film as an art form embedded in everyday experience. He was as attentive to blockbusters as to obscure independent work, and he made a point of explaining not only whether he liked a film but why it mattered. His columns combined plot description, aesthetic judgment, and humane observation, a mix that drew a wide readership well beyond cinephiles. In 1975 he became the first film critic to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, a landmark moment that validated film reviewing as serious cultural journalism.

Ebert championed emerging and overlooked filmmakers. He wrote early, enthusiastic endorsements of the work of Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog, among others, and returned often to their films as examples of personal vision in cinema. He launched a long-running series of essays called The Great Movies, which revisited classics and modern landmarks with the goal of making the canon more accessible. His annual yearbooks, collections of reviews, and themed volumes reached general readers and students alike, often being used in courses about film and criticism.

Television, Siskel, and a New Kind of Public Criticism
In the mid-1970s Ebert began a television collaboration that would transform his career and the public conversation about movies. Teaming with Gene Siskel, the film critic of the Chicago Tribune, he co-hosted a locally produced show that soon became the PBS series Sneak Previews. Their on-air debates were informed, witty, and occasionally sharp, embodying a give-and-take familiar to anyone leaving a theater with friends. The program later moved to syndication under titles including At the Movies and Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, and the duo's signature thumbs up/thumbs down verdict became a pop-culture shorthand for moviegoing recommendations.

The chemistry between Ebert and Siskel was central. They were rivals by day in competing newspapers and partners by night on set, and their disagreements reflected genuine differences in taste and argument. Siskel's death in 1999 was a profound personal and professional loss for Ebert. Afterward he kept the television franchise going, most prominently with critic Richard Roeper, with whom he co-hosted Ebert & Roeper in the 2000s. Through these broadcasts, Ebert helped normalize the idea that serious criticism could live alongside mainstream entertainment, reaching viewers who might never pick up a Sunday arts section.

Screenwriting, Books, and Festivals
While maintaining a full schedule as a critic, Ebert occasionally worked in other corners of film culture. Notably, he wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), a colorful, satirical melodrama that later acquired cult status. He also collaborated with Meyer on other projects. These ventures underscored his curiosity about the way movies are made, even as he kept to his central vocation as a reviewer and essayist.

Ebert's bibliography grew to include major collections of criticism and reflections on the craft of writing about film. He used his platform to elevate documentaries and independent films that struggled for attention, helping works like Hoop Dreams reach wider audiences through persistent, enthusiastic advocacy. In 1999 he founded the Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana, informally known as Ebertfest, devoted to films that deserved more recognition. The festival's welcoming hospitality and thoughtful programming expressed his belief that cinema is a communal experience.

Marriage, Community, and Mentorship
In 1992 Ebert married Chaz Hammel-Smith, known as Chaz Ebert, a major presence in his personal and professional life. Friends and colleagues often described their partnership as transformative. Chaz became a collaborator and later an essential steward of his legacy, taking leadership roles in Ebertfest and the continuation of rogerebert.com. Ebert valued mentorship, encouraging younger writers whose work he published and promoted, and he took seriously his responsibility to represent Chicago's vibrant arts scene. His friendship with filmmakers and critics alike formed a community that viewed movies as both entertainment and a shared language of empathy.

Illness, Voice, and Reinvention
Ebert was diagnosed with cancer in the early 2000s and underwent multiple surgeries. Complications in 2006 left him unable to speak or eat, and changed his appearance in ways that required a new public self-understanding. He met these challenges with openness and a renewed commitment to writing. Using a computer-generated voice for occasional appearances and communicating primarily through prose, he expanded his reach with a prolific blog, essays, and an active presence on social media. Freed from time constraints of television, he produced some of his most personal work, exploring memory, faith, science, politics, and the daily routines of watching films.

He remained at the Sun-Times, continued weekly reviews, and oversaw the editorial voice of rogerebert.com. In 2011 he published his memoir, Life Itself, a candid account of childhood, career, love, illness, and the joy of movies. The public response underscored how deeply readers felt connected to him. He did not hide his medical journey; instead he modeled how a critic might enlarge the conversation by inviting readers to witness the making of a life, not just the making of opinions.

Final Years and Passing
Even in his final years, Ebert kept a full writing schedule. He filed reviews, curated festival lineups, and championed new critics. In early April 2013 he announced a scaled-back workload to focus on selected projects, signaling that his passion for the work remained intact. He died on April 4, 2013, in Chicago at age 70, after a long struggle with cancer. Tributes from colleagues and filmmakers, including those he had admired and those he had challenged, highlighted his generosity, curiosity, and rare ability to put movies into the context of ordinary lives.

Legacy and Influence
Roger Ebert changed how people read, watched, and talked about movies. As the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, he established criticism as a serious literary endeavor without abandoning its practical function as a guide to what to see. On television, alongside Gene Siskel and later Richard Roeper, he proved that spirited, good-faith debate could be entertaining and enlightening, and that a mainstream audience would welcome robust discussion of aesthetics and storytelling. Through his books and The Great Movies essays, he created an accessible map to the history of cinema, opening doors for newcomers while offering fresh insights to veterans.

His advocacy improved the fortunes of many films and broadened the canon to include documentaries and international work that might otherwise have been ignored. Ebertfest, sustained after his death with the leadership of Chaz Ebert, carries forward his ethos of discovery and hospitality. The website that bears his name continues to publish criticism in his spirit, supporting a diverse group of writers. Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog acknowledged his importance not only as a commentator but as a companion to their creative journeys.

Above all, Ebert's influence rests on his insistence that movies matter because people matter. He argued that film is a machine for generating empathy, a phrase that captured his conviction that stories help us understand each other. He turned a personal passion into a public service, and in doing so he became, for generations of readers and viewers, a trusted companion in the darkened theater and beyond.

Our collection contains 34 quotes who is written by Roger, under the main topics: Wisdom - Justice - Freedom - Free Will & Fate - Faith.

Other people realated to Roger: Charlie Kaufman (Screenwriter), Mike Royko (Writer), Pauline Kael (Critic), Sydney Harris (Journalist), M. Emmet Walsh (Actor)