Terrence Malick

Born: November 30 1943

Where: Waco, Texas, USA

The ex-farmhand and Rhodes Scholar first attracted international attention with his 1973 feature debut Badlands.

The movie - starring Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen as a murderous couple rampaging through Dakota - was a huge critical success.

Although Malick's subsequent output has been limited - just three films in almost 30 years - he still has the respect of serious cinephiles.

The son of an oil executive, he grew up the eldest of three boys on a farm in Waco - the scene of the infamous police siege. (his brother Larry would commit suicide in Spain in 1968).

He attended high school in Austin, where he played football, and went on to study philosophy at Harvard University.

He went to Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar but quit before finishing his thesis following a row with his professor.

Moving back to America, he taught philosophy at Massachussetts Institute of Technology while freelancing as a journalist.

After attending the American Film Institute, Malick penned a treatment for Dirty Harry (it was never used) and co-wrote the screenplay for the offbeat Deadhead Miles in 1972.

In 1973, he scored an unprecedented success when he produced, wrote and directed Badlands, a story of teenage alienation loosely based on the Starkweather-Fugate killings of the late 1950s.

Critics hailed it as one of the finest debuts by an American director and were equally rapturous about his next film, the moving and visually rich Days of Heaven.

The intense 1978 drama - starring Richard Gere and Brooke Adams - landed Malick the Best Director award at Cannes.

However, rather than follow up its success Malick practically retired from the movie business, opting to teach in France from 1979 to 1994.

Returning to cinema after a lay-off of 20 years, Malick was Oscar nominated as writer and director of the 1998 World War II drama The Thin Red Line.

Recent work includes the action drama The New World, which is partly based on the legend of Pocahontas, and stars Colin Farrell.