Paul Schrader

Born: July 1946
Where: Grand Rapids, Michegan, USA

You wouldn't have thought this renowned critic, accomplished writer and respected director didn't see his first film until he was 17.

Raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist atmosphere, Schrader looked all set to enter the church before legendary film critic Pauline Kael encouraged him to write.

He began his career as a film critic in Los Angeles and published a still-influential study Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer in 1972.

His first produced script, co-written with his brother Leonard and Robert Towne, was for the Japanese underworld thriller The Yakuza.

Schrader then collaborated with Martin Scorsese for the first time on Taxi Driver, a classic study of urban alienation with an existential hero at its core.

Obsession. co-written and directed by Brian De Palma, was an homage to Alfred Hitchcock with a somewhat spiritual twist.

However, he grew disenchanted with the lack of control that screenwriters have when the final versions of Rolling Thunder and Close Encounters of the Third Kind did not resemble what he wrote.

He made his directorial debut with Blue Collar, a gripping, muckraking account of autoworker exploitation in Detroit.

Schrader garnered attention with the flawed but interesting American Gigolo starring Richard Gere.

However, he also penned what many have called the film of the 80s, Scorsese's Raging Bull, starring Robert De Niro as the doomed boxer.

After helming the uneven remake of Cat People, he directed and co-wrote the ambitious, multi-layered biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Acts.

Schrader's subsequent work has encompassed controversial subjects ranging from the life of Jesus, in the Scorsese-directed The Last Temptation of Christ to terrorism in Patty Hearst.

Working from Harold Pinter's screenplay based on the Ian McEwan novel, Schrader helmed the fascinating but ultimately empty The Comfort of Strangers.

He scripted and helmed Touch and in Affliction Schrader used the Russell Banks novel as a starting point for what many saw as one of his most personal films.

Auto Focus, a dark docudrama chronicled the kinky secret sex life of 1960s TV sit-com star Bob Crane ("Hogan's Heroes").

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