- Notoriously withdrawn from public life, his friends, such as Martin Sheen, have always remarked that he is a very warm and humble man who prefers to work without medial intrusion.
- For coloring in his films, he uses what he calls a "no-look look" which means he doesn't want it to be warm or cold or especially moody, or light, or anything. He wants it to look as if the viewer were looking through a window.
- The last press interview he gave was in 1979.
- Once called producer friend Rob Cohen from a highway saying, "I'm walking to Oklahoma!" Cohen asked, "What do you mean, you're walking to Oklahoma? From Texas?" Malick answered, "Yeah, I'm looking at birds.".
- His contract stipulates that no photographs are to be taken of him on set.
- After Days of Heaven (1978), it was a full twenty years before he directed his next film, The Thin Red Line (1998).
- Ben Stiller, due to Malick's love of Zoolander, once dressed up in character and recorded him a special birthday video message.
- One of the most praised aspects of his films are the quality of its cinematography. As of 2014, four of his films have been Oscar-nominated in the Best Cinematography category: Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005) and The Tree of Life (2011). Only Days of Heaven (1978) managed to win in the category and still is the only Oscar ever given to a Malick film.
- He grew up on a farm and worked as a farmhand before studying philosophy at Harvard. After graduating he went to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar but left before finishing his thesis (on Martin Heidegger) after a disagreement with his advisor. He moved back to the United States and taught philosophy at M.I.T. while freelancing as a journalist.
- For years he wouldn't allow his mother to read the script of The Thin Red Line (1998) because of the profanity.
- Turned down an offer to direct The Elephant Man (1980).
- After forty-three years of film career, he was photographed and caught on film while on set for one of the first times ever during the weekend of September 16, 2011.
- According to Roger Ebert, a unifying common theme of his films is diminishing of human lives beneath the overarching majesty of the world.
- U.S. film critic James Hoberman once said: "Where other movies have fans, Malick's produce disciples.".
- When the American Film Institute set up its conservatory for Advanced Film Studies in 1969, its first round of students included him, Caleb Deschanel, Paul Schrader, and David Lynch.
- In his contract for directing The Thin Red Line (1998), he stated that no current pictures of him could be published or shown anywhere.
- Began his film career at the age of 25.
- In 2004, during the filming of The New World (2005), Malick forced Christopher Plummer to climb a tall oak tree. The task was very difficult for Plummer, who was 74 at the time, and took 3 unsuccessful attempts before Malick was satisfied with his performance. This footage was not used in the final film.
- Christopher Nolan has cited him as a big inspiration for his own work.
- Is also said to be a fan of Zoolander (2001).
- Christian Bale calls him 'a great destroyer of vanity'.
- When he was in Paris, often went to watch football, supporting Paris Saint-Germain.
- Translated "The Essence of Reasons" by Martin Heidegger from German into English.
- His grandfather was an Assyrian Christian immigrant to the USA; "Malick" means "king" in Arabic.
- Is an avid bird watcher.
- His film To the Wonder (2012) was the last film that Roger Ebert reviewed.
- Wrote an early draft of Dirty Harry (1971).
- Is a big fan of Totò.
- Spent most of his twenty-year hiatus in France, where he taught philosophy from 1979-94.
- After meeting in Paris in 1981, Malick recommended to Martin Sheen that he should read The Brothers Karamazov. Sheen credits Malick as being a key to his own spiritual reawakening.
- Had been in Bolivia as a journalist in 1966 working on a story about Che Guevera.
- Appeared as unannounced guest on the screening of Badlands (1973) in the retrospective section of the 54th. Berlin film festival in 2004.
- Terrence Malick is step-father to actor, producer, and director, Will Wallace.
- Fluent in French.
- Originally worked on a screenplay limited to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's attempts to start a revolution in Bolivia. When financing fell through, he left the project, and subsequently Steven Soderbergh agreed to direct a film inspired by Malick's script that finally became Che: Part Two (2008).
- Worked as a Journalist for Newsweek, Life and the New Yorker before pursuing a career in film.
- M.F.A. from the American Film Institute.
- Until 2017, there was only one publicly available recording of Malick's voice which was his cameo in Badlands.
- When he was eight years old, he wrote a forty-three-page paper on planets.
- Wrote an unused draft of Great Balls of Fire! (1989).
- He is a fan of the film ''Smokin' Aces (2006)''.
- Malick's particular brand of meditative poetic-ism has noticeably and increasingly influenced other movies ( including trailers & commercials) since his return to directing with "The Thin Red Line" (1998). The terms "Malickian" or "Malick-esque" can often be found or heard in reviews and writings to describe similarities in another work.
- According to himself, the sense of spontaneity captured in his films has been inspired by Viaggio in Italia (1954).
- Magdalen College, Oxford currently (as of December 2014) lists Malick under "lost alumni" on its website.
- He joined to a conference for the first time in his career for one of his films, Song to Song, on March 11, 2017 at the SXSW Festival.
- He and his three-time composer Hanan Townsend developed a musical approach called 'shadows' which is creating a kind of fragmented versions of the themes from famous compositions in order to establish some continuity between these classical compositions that Malick uses and the musical pieces that Townsend creates.
- Emmanuel Lubezki has given him the nickname of "apuntador," the job title of person on Mexican soap operas who tells the cast what happens next in the scene.
- According to composer Hanan Townsend who worked with Malick in The Tree of Life, To The Wonder and Knight of Cups, Malick would often tell Townsend when he's recording with the orchestra to hit record 30 seconds or a minute before they start playing so they have these musical moments where no one's being told what to do. They might just be rehearsing or just messing around with something and that could become the base of something really interesting.
- Wrote a treatment for Dirty Harry (1971) but none of his work appears in the final version.
- For 18 months or so, well into 1979, Malick worked on a project based on the life of Joseph Merrick, the 19th-century British sideshow celebrity who suffered from a rare, debilitating disease.
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