Sally Potter

Born: September 19 1949
Where: London, England, UK

The writer and director is probably best known for the surreal historical drama Orlando starring Tilda Swinton.

Potter left school as a 16-year-old determined to become a film-maker and her earliest work was in the early 1970s with the London Film-makers Co-op.

However, she then changed direction and trained as a dancer at the London School of Contemporary Dance, later becoming a co-founder of the Limited Dance Company.

A period in performance art, with the actor Rose English, followed, alongside her work as a composer with such bands as FIG and the Film Music Orchestra.

Those different skills all came together when she acted, danced and created the score for The Tango Lesson in 1997.

She made her film debut in 1979 with Thriller, a deconstruction of La Bohème and her first feature was The Gold Diggers in 1983.

However, it wasn't until 1992's Orlando - with Tilda Swinton playing an Elizabethan nobleman - that she gained international recognition.

In 1997, she made The Tango Lesson in which she starred as a woman who strikes up a relationship with the dancer.

The Man Who Cried starred Christina Ricci as a Jewish refugee who moves to England where she meets a Russian theatre worker (Cate Blanchett).

Recent work includes Yes, the story of an American woman who falls in love with a Lebanese surgeon exiled in London.