Early life

Wales Anderson was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas. His father, Melver Anderson, ran an advertising and public relations company, and his mother, Anne Burroughs, worked in both real estate and archaeology. Anderson grew up with his two brothers Eric and Mel, but their parents divorced when Anderson was eight. While trying to cope with the disintegration of his parent’s marriage, Anderson often misbehaved at school.

In time, he turned his energies from mischief making to artistic endeavors. The young Anderson directed movies starring himself and his brothers, filming them with a Super 8mm camera. He read avidly, developing a passion for novels and finding himself consumed by storytelling. Anderson attended St. John’s School in Houston, where he became known for his large and complex play productions. Often these productions were based on well-known stories, films and even TV shows.

After graduating from St. John’s in the late 1980s, Wes Anderson enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. There he met Owen Wilson, who has been a writing partner or cast member in almost every film Anderson has made since. Anderson was a philosophy major and Wilson was studying English, and they had common interests. Anderson said to the AMC Blog in 1996 that the two first encountered each other while “doing a playwriting class together: this thing where everybody, about nine of us, sat around a table and discussed plays. And I always sat in one corner, not really at the table, and Owen always sat in another corner, not really at the table, and we never spoke the whole semester.”

After this class, Anderson recalls running into Wilson, and the two “started talking about writers, but we also talked about movies right off the bat,” he said to Interview Magazine in 2009. “I knew I wanted to do something with movies. I don’t know if he had realized yet that it was an option.” The two eventually became roommates and worked on a script for a full-length movie they called Bottle Rocket. Anderson earned his B.A. in philosophy in 1991.