George Hickenlooper

Born: May 25 1965
Where: St Louis, Missouri, USA

The documentary maker scored his first international hit with the Emmy award-winning Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse.

It told of the toll on director Francis Ford Coppola - the shooting, budget and casting problems - while making Apocalypse Now.

Other work includes the short Some Folks Call It A Switchblade with Billy Bob Thornton and Mayor of the Sunset Strip about pop impresario Rodney Bingenheimer.

The son of a playwright and a agit prop theatre troupe director, he was raised in Missouri, Boston and San Franscisco.

Hickenlooper derived his first interest in films from his great uncle Leopold Stokowski, who worked on Disney's Fantasia.

His early films, shot on Super 8, were made with college friend Kirk Wise, who would go on to director Disney's 1991 Beauty and the Beast.

While attending a Jesuit high school, Hickenlooper turned to live action short filmmaking and the shorts A Day In The Life and The Revenant were shown on local TV.

He spent one summer studying at the USC School of Cinema and Television then went on to Yale for a BA in History and Film Studies.

After graduating, Hickenlooper interned for producer Roger Corman and in 1991 wrote Reel Conversations, a collection of interviews with film directors and critics.

His professional debut came in 1988 with Art, Acting, and the Suicide Chair, a short documentary about actor Dennis Hopper.

However, he made his breakthrough in 1991 with Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse at the Cannes Film Festival.

Next up Picture This followed actor Peter Bogdanovich and his near nervous breakdown as he filmed The Last Picture Show.

In 1993, Hickenlooper switched to drama with the horror movie The Killing Box and the Bob Thornton-scripted Some Folks Call It A Slingblade (the basis for the Oscar-winning feature Slingblade).

Off-beat thriller Persons Unknown starred Joe Mantegna and Naomi Watts (his off-screen relationship with Watts led to the breakdown of his marriage) and Monte Hellman: American Auteur returned to documentary-making.

In 1997, he directed the drama Dogtown and followed it with the Golden Globe-nominated political thriller The Big Brass Ring, adapted from an Orson Welles screenplay with Miranda Richardson and William Hurt.

In 2001, the Man from Elysian Fields starred Andy Garcia and Mick Jagger and told the story of a failed novelist-turned-male escort.

The Mayor of Sunset Strip told the story of LA DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and included cotributions from Jagger, David Bowie, Courtney Love and Cher.

It was the second biggest selling documentary of all time - behind Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.