Christopher Nolan Family History

The film director Christopher Edward Nolan was born on July 30th, 1970 to Brendan and Christina Nolan in Westminster, London.  He has an older and a younger brother.

The three of them were raised as Catholics in Highgate, London.  Later they would move in different directions.  The eldest Matthew involved himself in finance and property development.  But the two younger sons, Christopher and Jonathan, became entranced by film at a young age.

When Christopher was six his father taught him how to use his 8mm camera.  A year later Christopher was making his own sci-fi films.  The budding director would build sets from egg boxes and toilet rolls and use his action figures to pay homage to the mega film Star Wars in his own version which he called Space Wars.

He studied English Literature at University College, London.  But his real reason for choosing UCL was its filmmaking facilities.  He became president of UCL’s Film Society.  He also met Emma Thomas who was to be his future wife and his partner in film ventures.  He graduated in 1993.

Filmmaking.  Christopher experimented with a number of short films before venturing into his first feature Following in 1998 – which he himself wrote, directed, photographed and edited.  It was made on a budget of £3,000, with most of its cast and crew being family and friends of Christopher.

He went on to make Memento two years later, based on a script from his brother Jonathan.  Initially he struggled to find a distributor.  But the film’s premier at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 earned him much critical acclaim.  The Hollywood studios began to take notice, in particular Warner Bros.

Blockbuster Movies.  Christopher became a high-profile Hollywood director with The Dark Knight trilogy of Batman films shot between 2005 and 2012.  He later parted company with Warner Bros. and signed with Universal Pictures.

His film Oppenheimer in 2023 won him the coveted Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.  His next film The Odyssey, shot in IMAX in 2026, looks like being an even greater success.

He has become the leading filmmaker of the post-COVID era.  Overall, his films have earned over $6 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing film directors of all time.

He has not embraced the digital world, either in his work or in his life.  He prefers the real thing to computer generated imagery.  And he has no email account.

For his contributions to film Christopher Nolan received a British knighthood in 2024.

Christopher’s Ethnicity

Christopher was born in England, but his ethnicity is a mix.

His last name of Nolan suggests Irishness and that is indeed true.  His paternal great grandparents came to England from Ireland in the late 1800’s.

His mother is American.  But all Americans have tended to come from somewhere else at some time.  In this case that somewhere else was Denmark.  And they also arrived in the late 1800’s.

The Nolan Line 

Nolan is an Irish name, first found in Carlow in SE Ireland and then extending to nearby Laois and to the west coast of Ireland.  Christopher’s Nolans might have come from county Cork.  That indeed is what his younger brother Jonathan has said.

But it looks like the Nolans that made their way to England – James Nolan and his wife Bridget – may have started out from Dublin.  They came in the 1890’s, first settling in Colchester and then moving to Woolwich, closer to London.  Here James found work as an engine fitter with the armaments company Vickers, as did his son Edward.

James and Bridget raised five children in Woolwich, two sons and three daughters.

Thomas Nolan.  Their younger son Thomas, born in 1908, married in Woolwich in 1935 and then moved out to Bexley in Kent where he worked as a Government costing clerk.  At the outbreak of war he enlisted with the RAF.  Working as a navigator, he became part of the Avro Lancasters team in Bomber Command.

Thomas did not survive the war.  He was shot down over France in 1944.

According to Christopher, his grandson:  “He survived 45 missions and was meant to retire, but I think he died on the 46th.  He is buried in France in a military grave.  When we were filming Dunkirk, we took the kids to see his grave.”

He left a wife and two small children, Brendan aged eight and John aged six.  Catherine lived on another forty-five years.

Brendan Nolan.  Despite the loss of his father, Brendan forged himself a successful career in advertising.  His skill as a copywriter took him in the 1960’s to America where he was active in shooting commercials in and around Los Angeles.  While in America, he met and married his wife Christina, a flight attendant.

He returned to England as an advertising executive.  He lived at his home in Highgate, London for close on forty years.  His children remember his storytelling when they were young.  In later life Brendan was a stalwart of the Highgate Society, editing the magazine Buzz and writing a play The People on The Hill about the neighborhood before his death from cancer in 2009.

Uncle John Nolan

Brendan’s younger brother John had a notable career, in his case as an actor.  An acting veteran, he also worked as a director and lecturer at Stratford College.  He is best remembered for playing the villain John Greer in the CBS sci-fi drama Person of Interest created by his nephews Jonathan and Christopher Nolan.

They liked to place him in their projects.  He appeared in the Batman movies and in Dunkirk where he played a blind man.  He died in 2026 at the age of eighty-seven.  His wife Kim described him as a “free spirit.”

The Jensen Line

Christopher’s mother Christina Jensen is American and has Danish heritage.  She was born in Ohio in 1942.

Danish Antecedents.  It is thought that her Jensen line in America began with Anton Jensen from Viborg in Denmark arriving in New York in 1888.  He then made his way overland to the farming state of Iowa.  There he met and married the daughter of a Danish family.  In 1902 they settled in the small town of Boscobel in SW Wisconsin.

Anton and Marie raised to adulthood three sons and one daughter.  However, they both died at youngish ages in 1917 and their children scattered.

Alfred, the eldest, became a commercial rep and moved to New York.  The next child Leeanna married and moved to Chicago.  The two younger siblings, Clarence and Anton Oscar, followed her and her husband there.  Anton Oscar married Emily Swan in 1936 and ended up at Rockport township near Cleveland in Cuyahoga county, Ohio.  He is seen as the father of Christina.

Christina Jensen Lynn.  Christina was an airline flight attendant and made her home at Evanston, Illinois near Chicago, that is prior to her marriage to Christopher’s father.  She would move with him to London.

However, the family would spend their summers at her hometown of Evanston.  As a result Christopher came to hold dual British and American citizenship.

Christopher Nolan’s Family Tree

• Francis Thomas Nolan m. Catherine Rees (1910-1989) in Woolwich in 1935 and moved to Bexley, Kent.  He died when his plane crashed in 1944 during WW2.
• – Brendan Nolan (1936-2009), advertising executive
• – John Nolan (1938-2026) m. Kim Hartman, actor

• Brendan James Nolan from Kent m. Christina Jensen Lynn, flight attendant from Evanston, Illinois (b. 1942) around 1966 and moved to Highgate, London
• – Matthew Nolan (b. 1968) m. Erika, property developer
• – Christopher (Chris) Nolan (b. 1970), film director
• – Jonathan (Jonah) Nolan (b. 1976) m. Lisa Joy , screenwriter

• Christopher Nolan from Highgate, London m. Emma Thomas, film producer from London (b. 1971) in 1997 and later moved to Los Angeles
• – Flora Nolan (b. 2001)
• – Rory Nolan (b. 2003)
• – Oliver Nolan (b. 2005)
• – Magnus Nolan (b. 2008)

• Anton Oscar Jensen from Wisconsin m. Emily Swan from Illinois (b. 1911) in Indiana in 1936.  They later moved to Ohio
• – Toney Jensen (1938-2019)
• – Christina Jensen (b. 1942), flight attendant