David Cronenberg Parents: Meet Milton Cronenberg, Esther Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor. David Cronenberg is the son of musician Esther and writer and editor Milton Cronenberg.

He came from a “middle-class progressive Jewish family.” His father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and his mother in Toronto; his grandparents were all Lithuanian Jews.

They kept a wide variety of books in the Cronenberg household, and Cronenberg’s father tried to introduce him to art films such as The Seventh Seal, though at the time Cronenberg was more interested in Western and pirate films, with a particular fondness for those starring Burt Lancaster.

David Cronenberg began writing as a child and continued to do so throughout his life, primarily in the science fiction genre. He went to Harbord Collegiate Institute and North Toronto Collegiate Institute for high school.

Cronenberg’s fascination with classmate David Secter’s film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966) sparked his interest in film. He began visiting film camera rental stores, where he learned the craft of filmmaking and produced two 16mm films (Transfer and From the Drain).

David Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.