Russell Mulcahy

Born: June 23 1953
Where: Melbourne, Australia

The former music video director is probably best known for the time-travelling sc-fi thriller Highlander starring Christopher Lambert.

He made his bizarre feature debut with the sacrilegious comedy movie Derek and Clive Get The Horn with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Next up was the cult horror about a killer pig Razorback ad he also directed early music videos for the likes of Duran Duran, Elton John and Queen.

His film for The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star - has the privilege of being the first video aired on MTV.

Highlander was as an international box office success which he quickly followed with a sequel Highlander II: The Quickening.

Denzel Washington starred as a cop accused of murder in Ricochet and Michael Caine starred in the action thriller Blue Ice.

The Real McCoy in 1993 acted as an action vehicle for Kim Basinger while Alec Baldwin starred as William Gibson's fictional creation The Shadow.

After the disposable sci-fi thriller Silent Trigger, Mulcahy had a moderate success with Talos The Mummy starring Jason Scott Lee.

Concentrating on TV work he made the Australian post-apocalyptic On The Beach and also directed several episodes of the gay drama Queer as Folk.

Recent work includes the TV movie The Lost Battalion and Swimming Upstream, the story of Australian swimmer Tony Fingleton (Geoffrey Rush).