Ron Shelton

Born: September 15 1945
Where: Whittier, California, USA

Shelton can be credited with making Kevin Costner a major star when he cast him in his low budget debut feature Bull Durham.

He earned a best screenplay Oscar nomination for his story of Costner's pro baseball player being drafted in to boost a minor league side.

Shelton, who once considered a career as a sculptor, spent five years as a baseball player in the Baltimore Orioles' farm system.

After a series of casual jobs he enrolled Arizona State and began writing screenplays to occupy his time.

His semi-autobiographical work about a minor league catcher titled A Player to Be Named Later was later to become Bull Durham.

In the meantime, Shelton signed on as a rewrite man and second-unit director for director Roger Spottiswoode's Under Fire.

An impressed Spottiswoode gave Shelton another second-unit assignment in the 1985 football comedy The Best of Times and opened the door for the fledgling director to have a crack at his own script.

After Bull Durham, Shelton's next project was Blaze, a comedy account of the romance between Louisiana governor Earl Long(Paul Newman) and stripper Blaze Starr (Lola Davidovich).

However, his next film - White Men Can't Jump - a profanity-laden study of street basketball scored with black and white audiences alike.

In 1994, the ex-baseballer came full circle with Cobb, the biopic of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones).

Golfing drama Tin Cup in 1996 went some way to retrieving Costner's waning fortunes but boxing movie Play It To The Bone was less convincing.

Shelton then switched from the sports genre to the hard hitting cop drama Dark Blue with Kurt Russell but was on less firm ground with the woeful comedy Hollywood Homicide.