Jonathan Demme
Born: February 22 1944
Where: Long Island, New York, USA
Demme's films have been nominated for 20 Academy Awards with the Silence of the Lambs receiving five Oscar nods.
The movie which launched Anthony Hopkins' serial killer Hannibal Lecter won the Welsh star the best actor gong.
Tom Hanks also landed a best actor Academy Award for his role as an AIDS-stricken lawyer in Philadelphia.
A former critic and publicist, Demme got his start with producer Roger Corman, writing and/or producing such epics as Angels Hard as They Come and Black Mama, White Mama.
He directed three films for Corman: Caged Heat, which he also wrote), Crazy Mama, and Fighting Mad.
His first film alone was Citizens' Band, a piquant study of CB radio operators which was totally ignored despite rave reviews.
One New York cinema ran it for free and still nobody came.
After the Hitchcock-style thriller, Last Embrace, came Melvin and Howard which won two Oscars but couldn't attract audiences.
Demme's first brush with Tinseltown, the Goldie Hawn vehicle Swing Shift, was a career low point, but he bounced back with the vivid Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.
His reputation grew with the unhinged comedy-thrillers Something Wild and Married to the Mob as well as Miami Blues, which he produced.
Demme's commercial breakthrough came with the chilling adaptation of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which earned him an Oscar as Best Director.
He followed that up with the equally impressive Philadephia and Beloved, starring Oprah Winfrey and Thandie Newton.
In 2002, he made the disappointing homage to the French New Wave The Truth About Charlie, starring Newton and Mark Wahlberg.
Returning to documentaries, Demme's The Agronomist told the story of assassinated Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique.
In 2004, he remade the John Frankenheimer Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.
