John Singleton

Born: 6th January 1968
Where: Los Angeles, USA

The director was catapulted into the Hollywood limelight with his breakthrough movie Boyz N The Hood.

The movie, based on his experiences on the gang-ridden streets of South Central LA, earned him an Oscar nomination - at 24 the youngest director ever to get one.

However, he has become increasingly better known for hi-octane action films such as Shaft, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Four Brothers.

The son of mortgage broker and a chemisty sales executive, he attended the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California, where he won three writing awards.

Boyz N The Hood, which starred Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding Jr, earned him Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.

As a follow-up, he directed the 1992 Michael Jackson video Remember the Time, featuring Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Iman and Magic Johnson in an Egyptian setting.

His second feature Poetic Justice, starring the late Tupac Shakur and Regina King received a warm reception at the box office, but critics were less than enthusiastic.

He followed with Higher Learning, which he also wrote and produced, and Rosewood, which was virtually overlooked by audiences at the box office.

Offscreen, in 1999 he was ordered to make a short film about domestic violence after pleading no contest to charges he assaulted the mother of his six-year-old daughter.

Singleton then turned his attention to an expletive-laden remake of Shaft, which saw Samuel L Jackson playing Richard Rowntree's character.

He returned to South Central LA after a decade to make Baby Boy, starring Tyrese, Ving Rhames and Snoop Dogg.

In 2003, he made 2 Fast 2 Furious, the sequel to the street racing box office smash The Fast and the Furious.

Recent work includes Four Brothers, starring Mark Wahlberg as one of four adopted siblings seeking their mother's killer.