George Roy Hill

Born: 20 December 1921
Where: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Died: 27 December, 2002 (81) of complications from Parkinson's disease

A Marine pilot and actor before becoming an Oscar-winning director, George Roy Hill left Hollywood to become a drama teacher at Yale, where he studied, before being brought out of retirement for a few brief years.

The veteran director will always be best known for his work with Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid made a superstar of Robert Redford and earned Hill an Oscar nomination. And The Sting, which reunited the trio and won eight Oscars, including best director for Hill.

Hill began his career, like so many, as a stage actor, before writing and directing for American TV in the 1950s.

His first films were adaptations of plays he had directed on Broadway - Tennessee Williams' Period of Adjustment (1962) and Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic.

After commercial failures with The World of Henry Orient, starring Peter Sellers, and Hawaii, his fortunes changed for the better with his only musical, Twenties spoof Thoroughly Modern Millie.

That set the stage for his breezy Newman-Redford vehicles. He teamed up with Redford for The Great Waldo Pepper and Newman for slap Shot.

Of Hill, screenwriter William Goldman, who wrote Butch Cassidy and Waldo Pepper, says he's "still and always the greatest director I ever worked with".

After 1979's A Little Romance, Hill retired to a quiet life of academia, but returned for The World According To Garp, adapted from the John Irving novel, for which Glenn Close and John Lithgow were Oscar-nominated.

He finished off with The Little Drummer Girl and Funny Farm before returning to his beloved Yale.