Darren Aronofsky

Aronofsky was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York, United States, on February 12, 1969, the son of teachers Charlotte and Abraham Aronofsky, both of Polish-Jewish descent. He grew up in Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach neighborhood. He said he was "raised culturally Jewish, but there was very little spiritual attendance in the temple. It was a cultural thing—celebrating the holidays, knowing where you came from, knowing your history, having respect for what your people have been through." He graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School. He has one sister, Patti, who attended a professional ballet school through high school. His parents would often take him to Broadway performances, which sparked his interest in show business.

During his youth, Aronofsky trained as a field biologist with The School for Field Studies in Kenya in 1985 and Alaska in 1986. He attended school in Kenya to pursue an interest in learning about ungulates. He later said that the School for Field Studies "changed the way [he] perceived the world". Aronofsky's interest in the outdoors led him to backpack his way through Europe and the Middle East. At the age of 18, he entered Harvard University, where he majored in social anthropology and studied filmmaking; he graduated in 1991. He became seriously interested in film while attending Harvard after befriending Dan Schrecker, an aspiring animator, and Sean Gullette, who would go on to star in Aronofsky's first film, Pi. His cinematic influences included Akira Kurosawa, Roman Polanski, Federico Fellini, Terry Gilliam, Shinya Tsukamoto, Hubert Selby Jr. Spike Lee, Satoshi Kon, and Jim Jarmusch.

Aronofsky's senior thesis film, Supermarket Sweep, was a finalist in the 1991 Student Academy Awards. In 1992, Aronofsky received his MFA degree in directing from the AFI Conservatory, where his classmates included Todd Field, Doug Ellin, Scott Silver, and Mark Waters. He won the institute's Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal.