Rob Zombie

Born: 12 January 1966
Where: Massachusetts, USA

Mr Zombie, originally called Robert Cummings, is a man who's dipped his fingers in many creative pies.

He's best known as a musician of the heavy rock genre, as a result of being the co-founder and lead singer of metal band White Zombie.

At the height of his musical success, he worked with his childhood idol, Alice Cooper, on a song for the soundtrack for the hit TV series The X-Files.

His music has been recognised with numerous Grammy nominations and albums going platinum, and after considerable success with his band, he launched an equally successful solo career.

But music plainly wasn't everything... he worked on the animation feature, Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, where he created a hallucinatory scene for the two characters.

After producing all his own music videos, Zombie turned to scripting and directing his first feature film in April 2000.

After designing a horror display for Universal Studios, they agreed to fund House Of 1000 Corpses.

However, once the film was produced and edited, the studio backed out because they deemed it "too dark and disturbing for release under their corporate releasing guidelines."

A tussle ensued whilst Zombie wrangled for the film rights from the studio, finally managing to sell it to MGM for a Halloween release in 2002. But again, the film wasn't released and so Zombie took his baby back.

At last Lions Gate Entertainment stepped up and the film was eventually released.

On a personal note, Zombie married Sheri Moon, who plays Baby Firefly in House of 1000 Corpses, in October 2002, after she appeared in many of his music videos.