John Woo

Born: 1st May 1946
Where: China

The Chinese director has taken Hollywood action movies by storm, bringing an almost balletic grace to elaborate fight sequences.

Influenced by both Martin Scorcese and Sam Peckinpah, his directing highlights include Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II and the sci-fi thriller Paycheck.

Trademarks include the use of soothing music against brutal scenes of violence and the freeing of doves in his American films as a symbol of peace.

At the age of six, Woo moved from the Guandong provice in China to Hong Kong with his parents, with their first year spent living on the streets.

At the age of 19, he joined a theatre company established by the Chinese Student Weekly, a magazine dedicated to the arts.

He soon began making super-8 and 16 mm shorts and was offered a job in a junior position at Cathay Film Studios.

Within two years Woo had worked his way up to assistant director, and soon became assistant director to the celebrated filmmaker Zhang Che, the Chinese master of 'martial chivalry' epics.

It was 1974 before he was given the opportunity to direct his first feature, The Young Dragons, after which he moved to Korea briefly and directed a kung fu short film called The Hand of Death, which starred, for the first time, Jackie Chan.

By this point Woo's directing career was at its peak in Hong Kong and he directed A Better Tomorrow, the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history. This was also his first collaboration with actor Chow Yun-Fat and producer Tsui Hark.

Hailed by action star Jean-Claude Van Damme as "the Martin Scorsese of Asia," Woo had the reputation of a legendary action director in the burgeoning Hong Kong film industry.

The next stage seemed to be to conquer Hollywood, after he decided to pursue work in America.

His US directorial debut came with Hard Target - the first Hollywood action move to be made by an Asian director.

This was followed by Broken Arrow starring John Travolta as a renegade pilot and Face/Off, starring Nicolas Cage and Travolta.

In the same year, with Terrence Chang, John formed his own production company - WCG Productions.

The company signed a two-year production deal at TriStar and produced the sequel to Mission: Impossible, again starring Tom Cruise.

In Windtalkers, he broadened his scope to direct a World War II epic focussing on the skills of Navajo marines.

British actor Clive Owen starred in the short Hire: The Hostage and Woo returned to feature work with his adaptation of Philip K Dick's sci-fi thriller Paycheck.