James Dyer is Empire's Digital Editor-In-Chief and has been writing for Empire since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Beginning his career in the year 2000 as a fresh-faced journalism graduate armed only with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Wars and an unhealthy obsession with James Cameron movies, James lied his way into a work experience placement at his favourite movie magazine, somehow convinced them to hire him and has never looked back.
During his time at Empire, James has won numerous awards, including The British Society Of Magazine Editors' Website Editor Of The Year (twice), a PPA, and a British Podcast Award. In addition to overseeing Empire's digital output, James is a regular contributor to the print magazine, he launched Empire's first tablet edition on the iPad back in 2010, and co-founded Empire's short-lived sister magazine, Pilot TV, in 2018. Ask James, though, and all that pales into insignificance when compared to the two days he got to spend with childhood hero Arnold Schwarzenegger for an Empire cover feature in 2012.
Over the course of James' storied career at Empire, he has had tea with Steven Spielberg, been yelled at by Christopher Lee, exchanged Yorkshire Pudding recipes with Liv Tyler, started a fight between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the President Of The United States, argued with Vice President Al Gore about the best episode of The West Wing, received an impromptu Classics lecture from RoboCop, eaten all of Keira Knightley's birthday cake, and barged in on Tom Hardy in a hotel toilet. Amazingly, he has yet to be sued. Or arrested.
James' love of film can be traced back to youth that combined an excess of free time with unsupervised access to both Harrow's Granada cinema and the local video store. Watching more films than can possibly be good for him throughout the '80s and '90s, James became hooked on the magic of cinema, spending every free moment in search of new discoveries that he would then talk excitedly (and exhaustingly) about to anyone who would listen — something he still does to this day, each week on the Empire Podcast.
His square-eyed interests are not restricted to the big screen, however, and James' boundless enthusiasm for all things televisual is demonstrated on a weekly basis via the Pilot TV podcast, which James hosts alongside venerable TV critics Boyd Hilton and Kay Ribeiro.
James' favourite movie is Aliens, he has strong feelings about the order in which you should watch the Star Wars films, he absolutely will not stop banging on about the genius of Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies (no matter how much we beg him), and he firmly believes The West Wing is the greatest TV show ever made.
You can find James on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and TikTok @jamescdyer.
