David Furnish Biography

David Furnish first gained recognition after he became involved in a relationship with Sir Elton John in 1993. A business executive with a passion for drama, he gradually met with John's high profile friends, and eventually left his job in 1994 to focus on a career in films. He pursued several courses at the British Film Institute and collaborated with John in establishing the production company, Rocket Pictures, in 1996. Starting with a ten-year first-look deal with The Walt Disney Company, he directed 'Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras', a candid documentary about his partner, in 1997. He has since then produced several films, musicals and documentaries. He is very popular among celebrities such as Elizabeth Hurley and is close to the Duchess of York and her daughters.

David James Furnish was born on October 25, 1962, in the Scarborough neighborhood of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, to Jack Furnish, a director at the Bristol-Myers pharmaceutical company, and Gladys, a homemaker. He was the middle child of his parents and has brothers John and Peter. He completed his school education from the Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute in 1981. He began working for pocket money as a child, often delivering newspapers, babysitting, or mowing lawns, and later waited tables, worked in a bottle factory and at a video store. His father, who encouraged him to save money for university, contributed an equal amount to his fund. Entering the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, on mostly his own money, he was very serious about his studies, and obtained his B.A. Honours degree in Business Administration in 1985. Soon after graduation, he joined the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.

David Furnish had a rough time growing up as a gay child in Scarborough in the late ’70s and early ’80s amidst mass arrests in coordinated bathhouse raids. He was more interested in arts than in sports in junior school and was often bullied and called names like "art fag" or "gay boy". No one in his class was openly gay, even though two others from his drama group would eventually come out. He had two separate sets of friends, straight and gay, which never mixed. He became actively involved with men only after entering university. He was conflicted about his sexuality, but his first attempt to have a conversation about it with his mother was "heartbreaking" as she feared he would never be happy. At one point, he even thought that he had not met the right girl yet, and continued to date women, while at the same time secretly meeting men. Frustrated with his double life, he took transfer to the London offices of his firm so that he could come out of the closet.

David Furnish met Elton John, fifteen years his senior, for the first time in 1993 after he was invited by a mutual friend to a dinner party at the latter's mansion in Windsor. The flamboyant and outspoken singer was immediately attracted to the shy, polite and well-mannered business professional, and knew that to be in a relationship with him, he had to respect him as a grown-up, independent individual. They had dinner the following night and developed a relationship that has lasted for nearly three decades.

John proposed to him at a dinner party at one of their Windsor homes in May 2005. On December 21 that year, they entered into a civil partnership at a private event as soon as it was legally allowed in England. They have two sons together, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, born in 2010, and Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, born in 2013, both from the same surrogate. In 2014, the couple had a major altercation, following which David, who was suffering from alcohol addiction, checked into a rehab clinic in Malibu. They got married later that year, on the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership, after same-sex marriage became legal in England.