Eli Roth

Born: April 18 1972
Where: Boston, Massachussets, USA

The director, whose student film Restaurant Dogs was branded "offensive and gratuitously violent", made his feature debut with Cabin Fever.

Drawing comparisons with the chill effect of Blair Witch Project, the movie was the horror hit of the Sundance Film Festival.

A horror obsessive, the 11-year-old Roth dismembered his brothers in Splatter on the Linoleum.

A graduate of the New York University Film School, his thesis Restaurant Dogs was a winner of the 1995 student Academy Awards.

He went on to make the animated series Chowdaheads and attracted criticism for the cartoon series The Rotten Fruit.

Roth's next project was producing a number of short films for legenday maverick David Lynch as well as researching a Broadway show.

His first feature Cabin Fever, which he also produced, was based on his own experience of a flesh-eating bacteria that attacked him while travelling in Iceland.

Upcoming projects include the teen sex comedy Scavenger Hunt and the horror feature Drawn.

Roth has also formed the Raw Nerve production company with the makers of Remember the Titans, Dusk Till Dawn II and Swimfan.