Norton was nominated for his second Academy Award® for his performance in American History X. He won a Golden Globe for that performance, and has won numerous other awards for other performances. The film Frida, for which he wrote an uncredited screenplay, was nominated for six Academy Awards® and won two. He also won the Obie Award for his performance off-Broadway in a revival of Burn This by Lanford Wilson.

Norton produced and directed the film Keeping the Faith and is currently producing five other films, including adaptations of Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War; Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil; and Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, for which he is currently writing the screenplay. Down in the Valley, which he produced, edited and performs in, was recently released.

Norton also recently created Class 5 Films in partnership with his brother Jim Norton, writer Stuart Blumberg and producer Bill Migliore. Class 5’s feature division will produce films through a first-look deal with Universal Pictures and the documentary division will produce nature and science films. Class 5’s first documentary production is a film for the Outdoor Life Network, The Great Rivers Expedition, about a historic white-water adventure that took place in China last winter. Class 5 is also collaborating with the Sea Studios Foundation on their multi-million-dollar series about earth system sciences for National Geographic, Strange Days on the Planet Earth, which Norton hosts and narrates.

Norton is also a committed social and environmental activist.