Gus Ólafsson

Gus Olafsson, born June 17 1968, Reykjavik, Iceland

After graduating from Sociology track at a junior college in Iceland, Gus went to Los Angeles to study Interior Architecture. He had projects on many well-known design shows, including shows at the Beverly Hilton and The Beverly Hills Hotels. He won numerous awards, and made the Dean’s list three times before graduating with honors in May 1994

He worked under one of the biggest name in production design for two years, none stop, Alex McDowell. And there he honed his skills and served as a decorator, art director and visual consultant for Hollywood’s biggest directors. (David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, David Kellog, Marcus Nispell and Steven Spielberg).

The saga continues.He ventured out on his own and became a Production designer. After production designing for several years and some hundreds of TV spots later, and being involved on over 18 features including Blade, Spawn and Very Bad Things. It was time for his final and ultimate goal – directing.

During his time of designing , he always worked very close with the directors and been part of the creative team. He started to work on short movies long time ago one of them is called “Consumption”” which is black comedy about Hollywood. Other short is ”Gríman” and third “The detective” and in the works is also a feature film called “Filthy Bastard”. He has incredible talent to make a combination of direction design and detail. As a director and ex-production designer, he’s able to keep mystery but in the same time be clear in story and not to be forgotten he’s amazing to work with actors. As director he uses all his experiences of the past 15 years being involved in Commercials, Videos, and feature films.

In his free time, Gus develops and writes imaginative spots and shorts, and thinks up ways execute them in the most unique way. He’s a certified scuba diver and feels very much at home under water and would love to spend more time there.

So here he is, he just moved to Iceland and is directing. He’s being repped by Pegasus in Iceland, P.I.G. USA, Flms, Finland, Dago Productions Russia, Radioactive films Ukrania, Filmworks Dubai, and recently he agreed to be represented in Prague, Czech republic. In 2003 he was the recipient of two Telly Awards and been nominated numerous times for his outstanding directing.