1990s: Early career Refn made his directorial debut with the Danish crime film
Pusher (1996). It garnered a Best Supporting Actor Award for
Zlatko Burić at the 1997
Bodil Awards. Refn then directed
Bleeder (1999), which featured much of the same cast from the
Pusher Trilogy, including actors such as
Kim Bodnia and
Mads Mikkelsen. Refn won the
FIPRESCI prize for the film at the 2000
Sarajevo Film Festival the work won Best Lighting at the Robert Festival. The film was nominated for Best Film and Best Supporting Actress at the 2000
Bodil Awards, as well as for the Grand Prix Asturias for Best Feature at the 1999
Gijón International Film Festival.
2000s: Critical acclaim In 2003, Refn directed and wrote his first English-language film,
Fear X, which starred
John Turturro and was shot in Canada. Although a financial disappointment, the Danish-Canadian production won an International Fantasy Film Award for Best Screenplay at the 2004
Fantasporto Film Festival, and was nominated for best actor awards (for Turturro) at the
Bodil Awards and the
Fangoria Awards, and best film awards at festivals including
Sitges Film Festival and the
Sochi International Film Festival. Refn later made two sequels to
Pusher,
Pusher II (2004) (a.k.a.
Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands) and
Pusher 3 (2005) (a.k.a. ''Pusher III: I'm The Angel of Death
). For Pusher II
, lead actor Mads Mikkelsen won a Best Actor award at the 2005 Bodil Awards, Best Actor at the 2005 Robert Festival (where the film was also nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Film, among other nominations), and Best Actor at the 2005 Zulu Awards. The film was remade as a British version in 2012, Pusher'', directed by
Luis Prieto and executive produced by Refn. The film earned Refn a
BAFTA nomination for directing. The film was also nominated in 2012 for an
Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, a
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture nomination for
Albert Brooks, Excellence in Production Design Award from the Art Directors Guild, won Best Director, Best Screenplay (for
Hossein Amini) and Best Supporting Actor (for Brooks) at the Austin Film Critics Awards, won
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Albert Brooks) and Best Use of Music in a Film (by
Cliff Martinez), the Critics Choice Award at the
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards for Best Action Movie, Best Director, Best Picture and Breakthrough Film Artist at the Central Ohio Film Critics Association, Best Original Score (Martinez) and Best Supporting Actor (Brooks) at the
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Best Supporting Actor (Brooks) at the
Florida Film Critics Circle Awards, Best Foreign Film at the Fotogramas de Plata, Best Director from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, a Top Films Award from the
National Board of Review, Best Supporting Actor (Brooks) at the
National Society of Film Critics Awards, the
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards and the
New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Best Director at the
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards. The Bangkok-set crime film
Only God Forgives, starring
Ryan Gosling and
Kristin Scott Thomas, premiered in competition at the
2013 Cannes Film Festival. The film was awarded the
Sydney Film Prize at the 2013
Sydney Film Festival.
Liv Corfixen, Refn's wife, directed the documentary
My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, centered on the life and work of Refn and their relationship. The documentary film premiered on 17 July 2014, in Denmark. In September 2011, Refn said his next film would be
I Walk with the Dead, with
Carey Mulligan, co-star of
Drive, slated to play the lead. According to Refn, it was to be a horror-movie sex thriller that may be set in Tokyo or Los Angeles. In October 2013 playwright
Polly Stenham was confirmed to write the screenplay with Refn. They stated that the film will have an all-female cast. Refn admitted that he asked Stenham to write the screenplay to compensate for his perceived inability to write female characters. By November 2014, the film had been retitled
The Neon Demon, with filming planned to take place in Los Angeles in early 2015. The film starred
Elle Fanning,
Karl Glusman,
Keanu Reeves,
Christina Hendricks,
Abbey Lee,
Jena Malone and
Bella Heathcote. The film was Refn's third consecutive in competition for the
Palme d'Or. Following
The Neon Demon, Refn developed and directed the streaming television series
Too Old to Die Young for Amazon in 2019 and
Copenhagen Cowboy for Netflix in 2023. The latter was his first Danish-language release since the
Pusher series.
2020s: Recent work On 23 April 2025, it was announced that Refn would write and direct a film for
Neon entitled
Her Private Hell, and it would star
Sophie Thatcher,
Charles Melton,
Kristine Froseth, and
Havana Rose Liu.
Principal photography began on 8 May 2025 and concluded in late July. The film will be released in 2026.
Other work: adverts, short films and teaching He directed an extended Gucci commercial featuring
Blake Lively and himself in a brief cameo, which premiered at the
2012 Venice Film Festival. The short film is entitled Gucci Premiere. He also directed the music video for his frequent collaborator
Peter Peter's band Bleeder, which featured his wife Liv Corfixen as a crazy nurse. He also directed a series of
Lincoln commercials starring
Matthew McConaughey. In 2019, Cannes Film Festival announced that it would host a masterclass with Refn on working in Film and TV.
Unrealized projects In 2005, it was reported that Refn would co-write a screenplay with
Nicholas St. John titled ''Billy's People
. Following the box office disasters of his films Bleeder
(1999) and Fear X'' (2003), Refn scrapped the project. In 2009, Refn expressed high interest in developing a film biopic of notorious English
occultist Aleister Crowley, with
Bronson star
Tom Hardy in the lead role. Refn admitted to not knowing anything about the life of the magician and referred to Crowley as a "Satan-worshipping cult personality". That year, he became attached to direct
Jekyll, a modern retelling of
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with
Keanu Reeves set to play the titular roles. Refn wanted the film to take place "in modern America and use as much credible science as possible." However, in February 2010, he dropped out of the project in order to work on
Drive. In 2010, Refn planned to direct
Paul Schrader's script
The Dying of the Light with
Harrison Ford and
Channing Tatum as the leads. However, in February 2010, Refn exited the project. In September 2011 during promotion for
Drive, he claimed that Ford did not want his character to die, causing the film production to fall apart. Schrader directed the film, which starred
Nicolas Cage and
Anton Yelchin in the Ford and Tatum roles. Following its release, Refn joined with Schrader, Cage, and Yelchin in protesting the studio's final edit of the project, which was not to Schrader's original vision. Tatum originally wanted Refn to direct
Magic Mike, which came to be directed by
Steven Soderbergh and released in 2012. That year, Refn was attached to a remake of the 1980s crime show
The Equalizer starring
Denzel Washington, until the deal with Sony fell through. The adaptation
The Equalizer ended up being directed by
Antoine Fuqua and released in 2014. Refn wanted to cast
Drive actress
Christina Hendricks as
Wonder Woman, but later focused on
Batgirl instead. In July 2016, Refn revealed that he had turned down the offer to direct the
James Bond movie
Spectre. The following month, he announced on Twitter that his next project would be titled
The Avenging Silence, calling it "
Ian Fleming +
William Burroughs + NWR = The Avenging Silence" and posted images for Fleming's novel
Dr. No and for Burroughs's novel
The Soft Machine. Producer Lene Borglum described the purported plot as: "[A] former European spy [accepts] a mission from a Japanese businessman to take down the head of a
Yakuza boss in Japan". == Directing style ==