He is loved by Hollywood A-listers and studio bosses alike, dubbed one of the most powerful men in Tinseltown and worth a reported £50 million. But when Manchester-born Col Needham walks into a glittering Hollywood event, as he will next Sunday when he co-hosts Elton John’s annual Oscars Aids fundraiser, few will have heard of this perpetually jovial yet quietly unassuming gent.
The only clue will be the letters on a small badge on his lapel – IMDb, which stand for the Internet Movie Database, the website universally considered the go-to fountain of knowledge for anything film or TV-related. It has become known as ‘Hollywood’s bible’ thanks to its searchable database, which lists millions of actors and crew members and details which films and shows they’ve starred in. Since its launch in 1990, it’s become the world’s number one source of information about big and small-screen entertainment, with more than 250 million unique monthly visitors – a fact, Needham says, that ‘still makes me pinch myself’. The site also contains plot summaries, biographies, trailers and news, and its reviews and ratings are widely used to inform users what to watch.
IMDb founder Col Needham is loved by Hollywood A-listers and studio bosses alike, dubbed one of the most powerful men in Tinseltown and worth a reported £50 million
Film fanatic Needham, 53, founded the company 30 years ago in the bedroom of his home near Bristol (a city he remains in to this day, although the house is now considerably larger) while he worked as an engineer for Hewlett-Packard.
The site has become such a staple in Hollywood that it has entered the lexicon. Woody Harrelson says: ‘When people say, “So, can you tell me what you’ve done?” I just go, “IMDb me.’’ ’ Twilight star Kristen Stewart agrees: ‘It’s the first place you go to know anything. It’s like, “I’m not sure, IMDb it!” ’
Needham might look charmingly British with his glasses, uneven teeth and receding hairline, but he’s now the toast of Tinseltown and admits he is ‘living the dream’. He’s been photographed with a Who’s Who of Hollywood including Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Julia Roberts and Jurassic World actress Bryce Dallas Howard. And he met his ‘favourite living director’, Steven Spielberg, for the first time at the Oscars in 2014. ‘It was like I was in a scene from The Godfather waiting to meet him,’ he says. ‘I rehearsed what I was going to say. Then when he got to me, he shook my hand and said, “I love IMDb!’’’
Needham is known throughout Hollywood for his cheery personality and laugh and is often seen at parties with his wife of more than 30 years, Karen, his childhood sweetheart. ‘Col is one of the happiest people I know,’ one A-list producer tells Event. ‘He’s at every party and he’s still such a fan of the work. He’s someone who genuinely loves film and you always get the impression he can’t quite believe he’s getting invited to all these parties.’
Needham with his favourite actress, Felicity Jones. In Tinseltown, IMDb’s STARmeter, which monitors how many clicks an actor’s profile page gets, has made careers
Wherever he goes, as soon as people find out he is the man behind IMDb, he is treated like a rock star. He’s been to a premiere party with the beautiful French actress Marion Cotillard and introduced his two daughters to Dev Patel and his mother to Felicity Jones – his ‘all-time favourite actress’. At one Oscars party, Sally Field, who was nominated for her role in Lincoln, stood on his wife’s dress. Needham recalls: ‘A bit of a fuss broke out because Sally had the world’s tallest stiletto heels on and she stood on Karen’s dress and put a hole in it. She skewered my wife’s dress!’
Needham even appeared in the 2015 Meryl Streep film Suffragette playing a ‘committee member’.
In Tinseltown, IMDb’s STARmeter, which monitors how many clicks an actor’s profile page gets, has made careers. Robert Pattinson was famously invited to audition for Twilight when the director and producers were looking for a ‘rising young star who had also been in a Harry Potter film’. At the time, Pattinson had played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and had just made it into the top 10,000 on the STARmeter. He landed the Twilight role and now commands £10 million a movie.
I started the database when I was 13. I’ve watched 11,881 films over the past 40 years
At the time of this interview, Needham has watched 11,881 films. ‘I average two a day and repeat viewings don’t count,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen my favourite film, Vertigo, more than 50 times.’ His passion began when he saw Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs aged five at the Manchester Odeon with his grandmother. ‘I just fell in love with film,’ he recalls. ‘Growing up in the Seventies, I was the right age for the first Star Wars. My mother took me to see Jaws when I was way too young. Jaws showed me the power of film and how it can mess with your head.
‘Manchester was a long way from Hollywood but my love of film turned into an obsession and I began to see so many films I could no longer keep track of the ones I’d seen and hadn’t seen.
‘I also had an interest in home computer technology so I began to track every film I saw on my own little database. Just for my own use. I used to pause the VHS tapes and type in the main credits – who produced it, the main actors in it, things like that. I started when I was 13 and I’ve now tracked every film I’ve seen for the past 40 years.’
Needham says he was one of the first to start using computer technology to communicate, in the days before the internet. ‘I had my first email address in 1985. This was pre-worldwide web. I started to exchange emails with other film fans around the world.’
Then on October 17, 1990 he posted the very first public version of the IMDb software on a film discussion group. ‘That was the birth of IMDb,’ he says. ‘Over the next few years, we accumulated a group of worldwide volunteers who had never met. Everything was done by email. All we had in common was a passion for film.’
In 1993, he launched a web interface after a computer science student suggested it. ‘We were one of the first 100 websites to launch,’ says Needham. ‘People would ask me “Have you been on the worldwide web?” and I could tell them, “Yes, I’ve visited EVERY website on the web!” It was that small.’
In 1995, the web exploded – and so did Needham’s website. ‘Our traffic was doubling every two weeks,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t continue doing it as a hobby. So I quit Hewlett-Packard and went full time.’
Needham with wife Karen and Robert Redford at the actor’s Sundance Film Festival
The pace of growth was such that just two years later, Needham received an unexpected email: ‘Hi Col, Jeff Bezos [Amazon founder and CEO] and I were discussing movie-related websites the other day and naturally IMDb came up in conversation. Jeff and I will be in London in January and we’d love to meet to discuss some business ideas.’
Needham lets out another belly laugh. ‘What’s so funny is it was written by the general counsel of Amazon and he felt he had to put Jeff in context.’ Today, Bezos is a household name and the richest man on the planet, worth £89 billion. He and Needham struck a deal for Amazon to buy IMDb in 1998, reportedly worth £44 million.
I started the database when I was 13. I’ve watched 11,881 films over the past 40 years
‘When I met Jeff, he had such a clear vision for Amazon,’ says Needham. Bezos gave him a signed original poster from Vertigo as a gift to seal the deal. Needham stayed as CEO and the company now has hundreds of employees worldwide. It lists 6.5 million titles, including more than 500,000 movies.
Needham remains passionate about film and has date nights with wife Karen that involve lunch followed by a movie. They have their own home cinema. He says he has never gone more than four days without seeing a film.
Does he believe online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon will eventually kill off cinemas?
‘Personally I love to see films in a theatre with an audience. But the most important thing is for people to see more films.’
He believes virtual reality (VR) will be the next big thing. ‘There are already VR models of some of the world’s most famous cinemas. Soon you will be able to put on a VR headset and get the experience of sitting in your favourite movie theatre. That’s the magic of the technology we have today.’
Does he ever dream of producing or directing his own films?
He laughs. ‘I’m in awe of anyone creative. It’s not a skill I have. I will keep going to the movies. I love the magic. I consider myself the luckiest man in the world to make a career out of something that started as a hobby in my bedroom.’