Andrew Simpson (born 1967) is a Scottish

animal trainer Animal training is the act of teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for purposes such as companionship, detection, protection, and entertainment. The type of training an animal receives will vary ...

who runs the company Instinct for Film with his American-born marital partner and fellow trainer Sally Jo Sousa. Simpson was born in

Inverness Inverness (; ; from the , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness") is a city in the Scottish Highlands, having been granted city status in 2000. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highland ...

in the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

. His parents worked for the aluminum maker

Alcan Alcan was a Canadian mining company and aluminum manufacturer. It was founded in 1902 as the Northern Aluminum Company, renamed Aluminum Company of Canada in 1925, and Alcan Aluminum in 1966. It took the name Alcan Incorporated in 2001. During ...

, and he grew up with his family on the company estate in the Highlands. When he was 20 years old, he traveled to Australia and found work as an extra for the 1988 film ''

A Cry in the Dark ''Evil Angels'' (released as ''A Cry in the Dark'' outside Australia and New Zealand) is a 1988 Australian drama film directed by Fred Schepisi. The screenplay by Schepisi and Robert Caswell is based on John Bryson's 1985 book of the same name ...

'' that starred

Meryl Streep Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Known for her versatility and adept accent work, she has been described as "the best actress of her generation". She has received numerous accolades throughout her career ...

. Simpson worked with the film's

dingo The dingo (either included in the species ''Canis familiaris'', or considered one of the following independent taxa: ''Canis familiaris dingo'', ''Canis dingo'', or ''Canis lupus dingo'') is an ancient (basal (phylogenetics), basal) lineage ...

trainer for three weeks and continued working as an extra and as an animal training assistant. He eventually moved to

Mission, British Columbia Mission is a city in the Lower Mainland of the province of British Columbia, Canada. It was originally incorporated as a district municipality in 1892, growing to include additional villages and rural areas over the years, adding the original T ...

and worked for Creative Animal Talent. He moved to

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

in 1994 and currently lives there on a ranch with Sousa. Their company Instinct for Film has trained "birds, bears, leopards and small animals" for films and advertisements. Simpson has trained animals over numerous television shows and over , including ''

Final Destination ''Final Destination'' is an American horror franchise that includes six films, ten novels, and two comic books. It is based on an unproduced spec script by Jeffrey Reddick, originally written for the television series ''The X-Files''. All of ...

'' (2000), ''

Elf An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic peoples, Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in Norse mythology, North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' ...

'' (2003), and ''

Borat ''Borat'' (also known as ''Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'') is a 2006 mockumentary directed by Larry Charles, which stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional Kazakhs, Kazakh jou ...

'' (2006). When Simpson and his company were hired to train wolves in Siberia for a French film called ''Loup'' (French for "Wolf"), the trainer decided to film the training process. Using the footage, he produced the documentary ''Wolves Unleashed'', which screened at several film festivals. His biggest project to date was ''

Wolf Totem ''Wolf Totem'' () is a 2004 Chinese semi-autobiographical novel about the experiences of a young student from Beijing who finds himself sent to the countryside of Inner Mongolia in 1967, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution. The author, ...

'' (2015), for which he trained wolves. After he completed his work on ''Wolf Totem'', he used footage from his three-year experience to begin producing a follow-up documentary, ''Wolves Unleashed: China''. In the 2010s, he also trained a wolf for the TV series ''

Game of Thrones ''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...

'' (the character Jon Snow's direwolf Ghost) and wolves for '' The Revenant''.

References

External links

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Instinct Animals For Film
Simpson's company {{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Andrew Animal trainers Living people 1966 births