Amenábar was born in Santiago Chile, in 1973, because his mother had gone through the Spanish Civil War, but the whole family back to Spain. He grew up in Madrid and entered the Sciences Information Faculty at Madrid's Complutense University, where he was not exactly a brilliant pupil, and after numerous failures he decided to give up studying cinema , unless it wasn't what he wanted. Since his perhaps best-known early short-film "Himenóptero" in 1992, in which he directed, produced, acted and wrote the script and the music, Amenábar progressed and reached his first commercial success in 1996 with "Thesis", a film which showed a new director had arrived on the scene.
Later "Abre Los Ojos" and "Los Otros" (The Others) confirmed his arrival in the cinematographic world. In all his films he also writes the script and the music, as well as composing the music for other films like "La Lengua de las Mariposas" (1999).
He differs from most other Spanish directors as Pedro Alamovodar in that he does not ingratiate himself on pet themes such as national events or recent past history, but enter into other spheres and has no fears about embarking into the phantasmagorical, psychological or even quasi-surrealist. Not yet thirty, this young man holds great promise for the next month, a new film directed in Egypt.