Chris Columbus is an American filmmaker best known for writing, directing and producing many of the most successful films of the past 30 years. He was born in Spangler, Penn., on September 10, 1958, and raised in Champion, Ohio.
He studied film at New York University and sold his first screenplay while a sophomore there. He eventually joined Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Productions and wrote his earliest screenplays “Gremlins,” “The Goonies” and “Young Sherlock Holmes.” Columbus’ directorial debut was “Adventures in Babysitting.” It was based on Oak Park and River Forest High School, although the name was changed for the movie to Hemingway High because Ernest Hemingway attended there. They kept the style of the high school’s jackets for the film, however.
Columbus went on the direct such hits as “Home Alone,” “Only the Lonely,” “Home Alone 2,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” and “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” Between 1984 and 2024 he was involved as a director, writer or producer of 84 films and television productions.
Columbus married Monica Devereaux, a River Forest native, in St. Lukes’s Church in 1990. They made their home in River Forest until 1996. Over the years, they had four children and visited River Forest frequently. Columbus made a number of philanthropic donations to churches and other organizations in both River Forest and Oak Park. His films used locations in and about River Forest, Oak Park and other local areas. For his breakthrough film, “Home Alone,” he used a million-dollar Winnetka home for interior shots and the vacant New Trier High School for the majority of filming. A segment of the film, however, took place in Oak Park’s Grace Episcopal Church. The choir was composed of students from both Ascension Grade School in Oak Park and Trinity High School in River Forest. Columbus’s wife Monica and her four sisters had each attended Trinity.
Submitted by Michael Guerin, March 2024
Sources: Wednesday Journal, 1991, 2001. IMDB