In Culture
A Brief History of Time (1991): Errol Morris's Documentary
Errol Morris's acclaimed 1991 documentary turns Stephen Hawking's bestselling book into one of the great science films. A guide to what it covers, where to watch it, and why it endures.
Last reviewed 28 May 2026 · How we research
In 1991 the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, then best known for The Thin Blue Line, turned his camera on Stephen Hawking. The result was A Brief History of Time, a feature-length film that takes the cosmology of Hawking's bestselling book and weaves it together with the story of the man who wrote it. More than thirty years on it remains, for many, the definitive screen portrait of Hawking.
What the film is about
Rather than a straight popular-science explainer, Morris built a documentary about both the universe and the life. Through interviews with Hawking's family, school friends, fellow physicists and Hawking himself, the film traces his Oxford and Cambridge years, his motor neurone disease diagnosis at twenty-one, and his subsequent climb to scientific fame. Alongside these portraits, animated sequences and the synthesised voice of Hawking explain the central ideas of his work: the Big Bang, black holes, Hawking radiation, and the question of whether the universe must have had a beginning. For the science itself in plain English, see our guide to the book A Brief History of Time.
Who appears in it
The interviewees read like a who's-who of late-twentieth-century cosmology. Roger Penrose and John Wheeler, figures from Hawking's working life, sit alongside Dennis Sciama, Hawking's doctoral supervisor. Hawking's mother Isobel, his sisters and old school friends fill in the personal side of the story. The score, by Philip Glass, gives the whole film its quietly insistent atmosphere.
Why it matters
Morris's film is widely regarded as one of the strongest science documentaries of its era. It does something that few cosmology films manage: it makes the ideas accessible without simplifying them past the point of recognition, while keeping the human story at the centre. For viewers coming to Hawking through The Theory of Everything, the 1991 film is a different and complementary experience: less dramatised, more reflective, with Hawking himself on screen.
Where it sits in his story
The documentary was released only three years after the book it shares a title with became a publishing phenomenon. By 1991 Hawking was already a household name; the film helped to cement his status as a public figure as well as a working physicist. For the wider screen record of Hawking's life, see Stephen Hawking on screen: a media library, and for the dramatised version of similar events, The Theory of Everything.