Birthdate: January 1, 1983 (43 Years Old)
Birthplace: Chonburi Province, Thailand
Fawn Veerasunthorn is Disney’s first Thai-born animated feature director. Veerasunthorn worked at Illumination as a storyboard artist (which is sometimes credited simply as “story artist”) on the animated features
Hop (2011),
The Lorax (2012), and
Despicable Me 2 (2013). Veerasunthorn jumped to Disney’s animation studio to be the lead story artist on the mega-hit musical fantasy,
Frozen (2013), where she worked with future co-directing partner
Chris Buck.
Fawn Veerasunthorn continued to be a story artist on a string of successful Disney feature projects, including
Moana (2016),
Zootopia (2016), and
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018). Veerasunthorn was then promoted to the position of head of story for Disney’s
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). Veerasunthorn made another leap, this time to co-director with Buck, on the original Disney animated musical fantasy,
Wish (2023), starring the voices of
Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, and Alan Tudyk, and produced on a $200 million budget.