Jim Henson - biography

“At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.”

“I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design.  I did a little bit of acting.”

“The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children.”

“If anything, there’s a difference in working with color in England and the color in the US.”

“It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty.  Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous.”

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending.  Keep believing, keep pretending.”

“I’ve never felt any sense of competition with anybody, and we’re all friends; we’re all good friends.”

“My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.”

“At the time of Polaroid - and I did a couple of other commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff - at that point I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all that sort of thing.”

“And also there wasn’t much money in television in those days anyhow.”

“I think my own strengths are in television production.”

“Actually the copies of characters is something I don’t particularly like to talk about in articles but just for your information, most characters there’s only one.”

“But with The Dark Crystal, instead of puppetry we’re trying to go toward a sense of realism - toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive and we’re mixing up puppetry and all kinds of other techniques.”

“I decided that what I really wanted to do was go off and paint.”

“I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too, so you’re right.”

“If you’re doing a large, complicated character with radio controls, it might take a number of people several months to make it and if you’re talking about a quick little hand puppet, it could be made in 2 days, so there’s enormous range there, and no real easy generalities.”

“It’s into the same bag as E.T.  and Yoda, wherein you’re trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it’s not so much a symbol of the thing, but you’re trying to do the thing itself.”

“NBC was trying to convert all of their local programming to color right away to encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there was not a major difference, though.”

“No, there’s not much competition between puppeteers in general because everybody’s working their own style.”

“Somebody like a Piggy or a Kermit, there needs to be several versions and so there will be several of them.”

Jim Henson directed the following films:
The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
The Dark Crystal (1982)
Labyrinth (1986)


Jim Henson has appeared in the following films:
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird (1985)
Arias with a Twist (2010)


Jim Henson contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Labyrinth (1986)