The Coen Brothers are known for their unusual writing process, in which they not only avoid outlines but don't even think about what their story is about or who their characters are before they start writing their scripts. They will start writing any scene they find interesting. Then, if an interesting idea for the next scene comes to mind, they will write it, then another, and so on, producing a first draft and discovering along the way what the story is. Afterwards, they will heavily revise what they have until they feel they have a shootable script. For this reason, they have said they will usually hit writer's block at the midpoint of any script and will start another script in the meantime to stay productive. For example, the entirety of Barton Fink (1991) was written while struggling with writer's block on Miller's Crossing (1990), and the first 40 pages of The Big Lebowski (1998) were written while stuck on Barton Fink (1991).
Both he and his brother Joel are huge fans of Stanley Kubrick.
He graduated from Princeton University; he once tried to explain a missed deadline by claiming he had lost one of his arms in a hunting accident.
He works so closely with his brother Joel Coen that the two are jokingly called "The Two-Headed Director."
Together with his brother Joel, he edits all the films they direct under the shared pseudonym "Roderick Jaynes." He has said that if "Jaynes" wins an Oscar for Best Editing, it will not be accepted by either of them and will only be claimed by a Price-Waterhouse representative (who would probably be asked to send it to one of them after the ceremony). In 1997, Joel and Ethan wrote a long article using the Jaynes pseudonym as the reporter's name, in which "Jaynes" harshly criticized self-important filmmakers and used the Coen brothers as the prime example of this negative tendency.
Before setting out to make Blood Simple (1984), he worked as a statistical clerk at Macy's.
Only three times in Oscar history have director-collaborators been nominated for the Best Directing Oscar: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007). (In fact, Wise/Robbins and the Coens won the award.)
He is Frances McDormand's brother-in-law.
He directed three films selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998) and No Country for Old Men (2007).
He directed four films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009) and True Grit (2010). No Country for Old Men won in the category. As a writer, he is the co-writer of the Best Picture nominee Bridge of Spies (2015).
He and his brother Joel Coen have edited the final cut of all their films since their first, Blood Simple (1984).
He (along with his brother Joel Coen) is part of the prestigious group of individuals who won Oscars for writing, directing and producing in the same year, with No Country for Old Men (2007). The others are Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Part II (1974), Billy Wilder for The Apartment (1960), Leo McCarey for Going My Way (1944) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). James Cameron also won three Oscars for Titanic (1997), but those were in the directing, producing and editing categories.
The first Coen brothers film in which both he and his brother Joel Coen were credited as directors and producers was The Ladykillers (2004). They shared these duties on all their films, but Joel was always listed as director and Ethan as producer.
In 1985 he was briefly married to a woman named Hillary. With his current wife Tricia Cooke, he has two children: a son, Buster Jacob Coen, and a daughter, Dusty.
He frequently includes kidnapping scenarios in his films.
He directed six actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Michael Lerner, Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld. McDormand and Bardem won Oscars for their performances in separate films.
He has a younger sister named Deborah, who is a psychiatrist.
Together with his brother Joel Coen, he ranked 88th on Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List. In 2002 they had ranked 92nd.
He is a graduate of Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington, MA, along with his brother Joel Coen. It is a fully accredited college, usually for students who enter at age 16 before graduating from high school.
His mother, Rena Neumann Coen, died of kidney disease in 2001.
He has used the character name Marva Munson in his last two films. The first was Intolerable Cruelty (2003) (Judge Marva Munson) and the second was The Ladykillers (2004) (Marva Munson).
He is Joel Coen's brother.