Stephen Frears

Born: 20 June 1941
Where: Leicester, England

The Oscar-nominated onetime theatre director is one of the elite group of British film-makers to be taken to its heart by Hollywood.

Career highlights have included the con classic The Grifters, the big screen adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons and the immigration drama Dirty Pretty Things.

Coming from a family of bakers in the East Midlands, one of his uncles was head of the famous Frears Biscuits until the company was taken over.

As one of the "new wave" of British film-makers, Frears embarked on a movie career after having earned a Cambridge law degree.

An interest in the stage took him to the Royal Court Theatre in 1966, where director Karel Reisz offered him an assistant director position on the comedy-drama Morgan.

During filming he also met Albert Finney and Lindsay Anderson who hired him as his assistant on If in 1968.

Concentrating on TV work, he directed successes including Follyfoot and also made his directorial debut in 1971 with the satire Gumshoe, starring Albert Finney.

During this period he also worked on TV outings including the BAFTA-award winning Walter, The Comic Strip Presents and the TV film Bloody Kids.

In 1984 he won a legion of fans with his second big screen outing The Hit, a Spanish-set gangster caper starring John Hurt and Terrence Stamp.

The following year he collaborated with Anglo-Pakistani author Hanif Kureishi on My Beautiful Laundrette, which made a star of Daniel Day-Lewis.

Frears followed it with the 1987 satire Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and the biopic of playwright Joe Orton Prick Up Your Ears starring Alfred Molina.

He made his entry into Hollywood with the French tale of deceipt and deception Dangerous Liaisons, starring John Malkovich and Glenn Close.

The Grifters - starring John Cusack and Angelica Huston - went onto land four Oscar nominations including best director for Frears.

In 1992, he made the disappointing comedy-drama The Accidental Hero and took just six weeks to shoot his adaptation of novelist Roddy Doyle's The Snapper.

Subsequent outings included Mary Reilly, The Van (another Doyle adaptation) and the Western The Hi-Lo Country starring Woody Harrelson.

In 2000, he re-teamed with Cusack for his adaptation Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity and also directed the Depression era drama Liam with Ian Hart.

With 2002's drama-thriller Dirty Pretty Things he examined the underbelly of illegal immigration in London.

Recent work includes the comedy drama Mrs Henderson Presents starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins.