Martin Brest

Born: August 5 1951
Where: Bronx, New York, USA

The Oscar-nominated director is probably best known for The Scent of A Woman which gave Al Pacino as best actor Academy Award.

However, he is more recently notorious for helming the mafia comedy turkey Gigli, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.

As a film student at New York University in the early 1970s, he first won notices first with his award-winning short subject Hot Dogs for Gauguin (which starred a then unknown Danny DeVito).

He then wrote and directed his first feature, Hot Tomorrows while part of a fellowship program at the American Film Institute.

Two years later he was directing a major Hollywood film - Going in Style with George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg.

Brest was treading water until the call came in for Beverly Hills Cop, a slickcomedy action caper starring Eddie Murphy which went on to storm the box office.

Picking his projects carefully, next he directed Robert De Niro in an atypical comic role (opposite Charles Grodin) in Midnight Run in 1992.

Then he steered Pacino to an Academy Award in Scent of a Woman (He was nominated for Best Director and the film, which he produced, as Best Picture.)

Less successful was 1998's Meet Joe Black, starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, which got a Razzie nomination for worst remake.

However, nothing could prepare for 2003's Gigli, a hopeless collision of romantic comedy and mob caper starring Affleck and Lopez featuring some of the worst dialogue commited to celluloid.