M Night Shyamalan

Born: August 6 1970
Where: Pondicherry, India

The comic book fan and director made his breakthrough with the chilling thriller The Sixth Sense - one of the highest grossing films of all time.

He has since carved a name for himself as a director of movies with supernatural themes that hinge on a clever twist.

Indian born, but Philadelphia bred, Manoj Night moved to Penn Valley, Pennsylvania , where he attended a private Catholic school.

Although groomed for a medical career by his doctor parents, he was given a Super 8 camera aged eight and made his first film, aged ten.

The movie was the first in a series of 45 short films made by Manoj by the time he was 16.

He furthered his education and obsession with films at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where he studied film, and where he wrote Wide Awake which was eventually turned into a movie.

Inspired by Steven Spielberg, he makes a point of appearing a la Hitchcock in tiny cameos in his movies.

In 1992 he wrote, directed and starred in his first feature film, Praying With Anger, and the following year he sold the screenplay for Labor of Love to Fox for over half a million pounds.

A deal was struck when he sold the script for Wide Awake for over £100,000 on the condition that he would direct - but proved to be one of 1998's least profitable films.

His breakthrough came with The Sixth Sense - a blockbuster which won Manoj two Oscar nominations, for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

His next job saw a major change of direction - writing the script for children's film Stuart Little - but he was back on course with Unbreakable.

Starring Bruce Willis (who also starred in The Sixth Sense) and Samuel L Jackson, it continued his supernatural theme and provided the trademark twist.

In 2002, Signs - combining the themes of aliens and crop circles - showed a loss of direction which even star Mel Gibson could not salvage.

Recent work includes The Village, a chilling drama with an all-star cast about the residents of a Pennsylvania town in the 1860s.