Christopher Nolan and his wife become a knight and a dame in honours list

Film director Christopher Nolan and his wife, film producer Emma Thomas, have rounded off a successful award season by receiving two of the highest honours in the UK.

The couple are to receive a knighthood and damehood, respectively, for their services to film, the Government has said.

Their partnership dates back to their days at University in the 1990s and has produced major blockbusters including The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and their most recent venture, the epic biopic Oppenheimer, which swept the 2024 award ceremonies.

The couple met on their first week at University College London (UCL) where Nolan, 53, read English and Thomas, 52, read history.

London-born Nolan chose the school because of its filmmaking facilities and introduced Thomas to UCL Film Society, where he was president and produced short films. The pair married in 1997 and share four children.

Together they co-founded and run a production company, Syncopy, which has been behind many of their blockbusters.

In 1998, Nolan made his directorial debut with crime thriller Following, which he co-produced with Thomas.

Two years later Memento, in which Guy Pearce played a man suffering memory loss desperately trying to discover who attacked him and killed his wife, unlocked Hollywood for them. The film received two Academy Award nominations, for best original screenplay and best film editing, as well as being a box office success. Following the wellreceived Memento, Nolan directed Insomnia, a psychological thriller starring Al Pacino as a detective on the hunt for a killer in an Alaskan town. It was another critical and commercial smash, the beginning of a gilded run for Nolan and Thomas.

In 2005, they made the first film in the Dark Knight trilogy, withchristianbaleplayingthe titular role in Batman Begins. Nolan received his first best director Oscar nomination for 2017’s Dunkirk.

Their latest project, Oppenheimer won seven Oscars and seven Baftas including Nolan’s first Academy of Motion Picture Award as Best Director.