Ethan Coen

Born: September 21 1957
Where: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Sharing the writing, producing and directing responsibilities of their films, Ethan and his brother Joel have become the most celebrated brother act in recent entertainment memory.

Each of the writing team's first three films paid homage to a classic cinematic genre with a knowing quality born of many hours spent in darkened cinemas.

Joel is credited for directing a series of stylish, irreverent and cinema-savvy movies that have charmed critics and thrilled an initially small but loyal band of viewers, while Ethan gets the producer's credit.

These are self-conscious movies with style to spare: manic, sharp yet graceful camera movements, slick yet richly textured cinematography and powerhouse performers spouting smart and beautifully artificial dialogue.

The Coen magic began with Blood Simple, a tough and witty modern film noir starring John Getz and M Emmet Walsh.

From the early shots of a rain-spattered windshield through a harrowing and skilfully composed finale, Blood Simple created an atmosphere of suspense and mutual suspicion to rival any film of its kind.

It was followed, in a brilliant display of technical and artistic versatility, by Raising Arizona, a zany dysfunctional family comedy about a childless couple who decide to kidnap a quintuplet.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, the Coens have relied heavily upon detailed pre-production and storyboarding.

With the notable exception of Raising Arizona, they have favoured chilly irony in the grand tradition of Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.

Fargo, their belated 1996 commercial and critical breakthrough, may be the ultimate example of this tendency as it veers eccentrically from low-key quirky comedy to hard-edged violence with serious consequences.

Though they are visually oriented and allow little deviation from their scripts, actors love to work with them due to the trust they inspire with their low-key directing style.

Their undeniable talent and terminal cool have propelled them to the front ranks of the generation of filmmakers who emerged since the days of the 1970s American auteurs (Altman, Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, etc).

Though Joel is officially the director, they collaborate on all aspects of their productions.

They reportedly tend to be perceived as an interchangeable unit on their film sets, as they chuckle together at private jokes and complete each other's sentences.

Barton Fink garnered the Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival and a directing prize for Joel.

The lack of an official masterpiece on his resume didn't prevent Joel from garnering the official recognition of a Best Director Oscar for his work on Fargo.

The black comedic crime film about a used car salesman (William H Macy) who hires two inept thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stomare) to stage a fake kidnapping of his wife in hopes of extorting ransom money from his wealthy father-in-law, earned seven Oscar Nominations.

For Ethan, this consisted of a nod for Best Picture (as producer) in addition to sharing two for Best Film Editing (under the joint pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes) and Best Original Screenplay, winning the latter.

Next up was O Brother Where Are Thou and the accomplished film noir The Man Who Wasn't There (both films which failed to credit Ethan).

Recent work includes Intolerable Cruelty and the remake of the Ealing comedy classic The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks.