Peter Chelsom

Born: April 20 1956
Where: Blackpool, Lancashire, England

The one-time photographer first won accolades for Hear My Song, his soft-centred real life story of Irish tenor Joseph Locke.

However, he was also responsible for the woeful all-star suburban comedy Town & Country with Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn.

The overblown movie, which also featured Diane Keaton and Andie McDowell was branded "possibly one of the greatest box office flops of all time".

After initially training as a photographer, Chelsom launched his career as an actor and studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

His acting career included appearances in TV's Intensive Care, A Woman of Substance and An Englishman Abroad and on the big screen in The American Success Company.

However, despite also playing leads with the RSC and Royal Court, he cut short his decade-long acting career before he was 30 and switched to directing.

The 1998 short Treacle - the first of his Blackpool-based trilogy of films - was BAFTA nominated and he followed it up with the popular Hear My Song in 1991.

He completed his trilogy of "hometown movies" in 1995 with Funny Bones, a show business fairy tale featuring performances by Jerry Lewis and newcomer Lee Evans.

In 1998, with The Mighty, with Sharon Stone starring in and producing, Chelsom cemented the promise of his earlier films only for his career to go into freefall with Town and Country.

Putting that movie's disappointment behind him, he directed the amiable romantic comedy Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, in 2001.

Three years later Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez starred in Shall We Dance?, Chelsom's remake of the Japanese original.

Bizarrely, $4,000 worth of jewellery worn by Susan Sarandon during the filming of the movie was stolen and recovered at a murder scene in Winnipeg in July 2003.