Julian Schnabel

Born: October 26 1951
Where: Brooklyn, New York City, USA

The film-maker and "self-proclaimed lion of the New York art world" attracted critical acclaim for his drama The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Adapted from the novel by Jean-Dominique Bauby, it told the autobiographical story of the Elle editor who was almost totally paralysed by a stroke.

Schnabel was born in New York but raised in Brownsville, Texas before returning to his hometown to attend art college.

On the breadline, he struggled as a short-order cook and hung out at Max's Kansas City, the restaurant-nightclub in Greenwich Village, while he worked on his art.

In 1975, he had his first solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and then travelled frequently to Europe, where he was influenced by the work of Antoni Gaudi, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys.

It was with his first solo show, at the Mary Boone Gallery in 1979, that Schnabel would come to be regarded as a major new force in the art world.

He participated at the Venice Biennale in 1980 and by the mid-1980s had become a major figure in the Neo-expressionism movement.

His now famous "plate paintings" - large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates - brought on a mixed response from the art world.

Schnabel made his big screen debut in 1996 with Basquiat, the story of the meteoric rise of a New York street artist in the 1980s.

In 2000, he directed the acclaimed Before Night Falls, which starred an Oscar-nominated Javier Bardem as the Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly landed Schnabel the best director award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.