Paul Haggis

Born: March 10 1953
Where: London, Ontario, Canada

The TV writer-turned-director attracted critical acclaim for his gritty urban drama Crash in 2005.

Haggis suffered a heart attack during the shooting of the ensemble thriller, which followed the intersecting lives of LA residents as the city imploded.

Despite the coronary, he would not allow anyone to replace him and insisted on finishing the Oscar-winning move himself.

After studying photography at art school, he moved to England where he pursued an unsuccessful career as a fashion photographer.

Upon returning to Canada he attended film school and also worked in his father's road construction business while writing for local theatre.

He moved to LA where he worked as a furniture mover and an photographer for a department store while he tried to get a break in the film industry.

His first break came - ironically - from Canada as a writer on the sitcom Hangin In and his first Hollywood job was working on the TV hit series Diff'rent Strokes.

(as there was no cash to pay him, Haggis went home with a large, overstuffed chair).

The big break came when Haggis was taken on as as supervising producer on thirtysomething, a job which landed him two Emmys.

He went on to create the hit series Due South and EZ Street before quitting TV work in 2000 to concentrate on features.

His first success was optioning a short story and writing the screenplay that went on to become the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood.

The movie - starring Eastwood and Hilary Swank - earned Haggis a best script Oscar nomination.

His first experience of directing was 1993's drama Red Hot - but in 2005 he scored a critical success with Crash, starring Sandra Bullock and Don Cheadle.

He subsequently became the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to write two back-to-back Best Picture Winners, for Crash and the previous year's winner Million Dollar Baby.

The following year he scripted the Tony Goldwyn rom-com The Last Kiss as well as writing the screenplay for Clint Eastwood's Word War II drama Flags of Our Fathers.

Haggis contributed the storyline to its companion piece - Letter from Iwo Jima - and also penned the screenplay for the successful Bond outing Casino Royale.

In 2007, he wrote and directed the hard-hitting anti-war drama The Valley of Elah, starring Tommy Lee Jones as a father searching for his AWOL soldier son.