David Koepp

Born: 1963
Where: Pewaukee, Wisconsin

Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired Koepp to embark on a career in screenwriting - a direction that has now seen him helming the likes of Stir of Echoes and Secret Window.

While working as a script reader, he impressed the Argentine actor/director Martin Donovan, who asked the then 23-year-old to collaborate on the 1988 Italian movie, Apartment Zero.

Koepp's first solo writing credit came two years later with the independently produced Bad Influence.

He actually turned down an offer from Universal executive Casey Silver who offered to buy and produce the movie.

Impressed by both the finished product and Koepp's talent for writing, Silver, by then president of Universal Pictures, offered him a regular pay check as an 'on-the-lot' contract screenwriter.

Over the next four years, Koepp earned screenwriter credits on Death Becomes Her, Carlito's Way and The Paper and The Shadow.

Far more momentous was his collaboration with Michael Crichton on the script for Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg.

The following year he made his directorial debut with Suspicious while maintaining a parallel career as a writer for Mission Impossible and his own The Trigger Effect.

In 1999, he directed the supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes with Kevin Bacon and went on to script Panic Room and Spider-Man.

His next work in the director's chair was the thriller Secret Window, starring Johnny Depp and based on a Stephen King novella.