 Jens Peter Hammerich was born on 16 November 1954 in Copenhagen to translator Ida Elisabeth Hammerich and Paul Hammerich, journalist, writer and editor in chief at the national Danish newspaper Politiken.From an early age he was called Rumle and when his father in 1959 asked her mother to translate Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts for Politiken, she gave the perpetually dirty boy Pig-Pen her son's nickname.He graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1979, and had his debut as a feature film director in 1983 with the children film "Otto er et næsehorn" "Otto Is a Rhino".