Jonathan Glazer (born 26 March 1965) is an English filmmaker. He began his career in theatre before transitioning into film, directing the features Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013), and The Zone of Interest (2023). His accolades include a BAFTA Award, a British Independent Film Award, and a César Award. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards.

Glazer's work is defined by depictions of flawed and desperate characters; themes such as alienation, loneliness and individualism; and a bold visual style uses an omniscient perspective and dramatic music. For the historical drama The Zone of Interest, he won the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film and received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Glazer also accepted the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film on behalf of the United Kingdom.

Glazer has directed music videos for acts including Blur, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Richard Ashcroft and Jamiroquai. He received nominations for the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction for his videos for Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" (1996) and Radiohead's "Karma Police" (1997). He has also directed commercials for brands including Kodak, Sony, Nike, Barclays, Guinness and Alexander McQueen.

"There were all these fantastic characters, who were in and out of my house when I was a little boy. Many of them were East End Jews who had moved to the suburbs for a better quality of life, not super-intellectual people, but incredible entertainers – vaudeville musicians, writers and the like. As a child, I loved and absorbed the richness of that culture."

Jonathan Glazer was born on 26 March 1965 in London, England, and is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. His ancestors were Ukrainian Jews and Bessarabian Jews who fled the Kishinev pogrom and arrived in the United Kingdom in the 1900s. He said: "My great-grandparents were born in Vilnius and Odesa. One was a tailor. His wife, a seamstress." His family lived in Hadley Wood, near Barnet, and was Reform Jewish: "Synagogue three times a year, and Friday-night dinners every week." His father was a cinephile, with whom he frequently watched David Lean, Sidney Lumet, Sydney Pollack, and Billy Wilder movies.

Glazer attended the Jewish Free School, then located in the borough of Camden. During his childhood, he participated in the Givat Washington programme, spending five months in a religious boarding school in Israel. After finishing high school, he went to art school, saying drawing was the only thing he was good at. After graduating with an emphasis in theatre design from Nottingham Trent University, Glazer began his career directing theatre and making film and television trailers.

In 1993, Glazer wrote and directed three short films ("Mad", "Pool" and "Commission"), and joined Academy Commercials, a production company based in Central London.^{[citation needed]} He directed campaigns for Guinness (Dreamer, Swimblack and Surfer) and Stella Artois (Devil's Island).

Glazer directed the music videos for "Karmacoma" by Massive Attack and "The Universal" by Blur, both released in 1995. He worked with Radiohead on their videos for "Street Spirit" (1996) and "Karma Police" (1997). He said "Street Spirit" was a turning point in his work: "I knew when I finished that, because [Radiohead] found their own voices as an artist, at that point, I felt like I got close to whatever mine was, and I felt confident that I could do things that emoted, that had some kind of poetic as well as prosaic value."