John Boorman

Born: 18 January 1933
Where: Shepperton, Middlesex, UK

The former film critic and sometime documentary-maker is probably best known for the chilling Deliverance and wartime drama Hope & Glory.

However, he is commercially unpredictable ranging from fantasy adventure (Excalibur) to hardheaded drama (The General).

He demonstrated an early entrepreneurial spirit by leaving school at the age of 16 and setting up a successful dry cleaning business with a friend.

He also worked as a film critic on the side and joined the newly-formed Independent Television News (ITN) in 1955 as an assistant film editor and later produced documentaries.

Boorman's early dissatisfaction with realistic documentaries led him while head of the BBC's Bristol Film Unit to begin making poetic or impressionistic documentaries.

His first feature Having a Wild Weekend was a competent, exuberant 1960s musical featuring the Dave Clark Five.

After The Great Director, a documentary on DW Griffith for the BBC, Boorman moved to the USA and directed the genre-bending Point Blank.

The taut, violent thriller marked by a complex flashback narrative structure starred a palpably sexy Angie Dickinson and a somnambulistically intense Lee Marvin.

Hell in the Pacific also starred Marvin and mined the director's WWII experiences which included guilt about surviving an ambush on Saipan.

For Leo the Last he upped the allegorical content to a level considered excessive by most with his story of an expatriate prince who becomes emotionally involved with his poor black neighbours.

Boorman made a strong recovery with in which four Atlanta businessmen take off on a weekend canoe trip and are hunted down by wild hillbillies.

However, his next two films missed the mark. The sci-fi pic Zardoz confused audiences while Exorcist II: The Heretic was a fiasco of monumental proportions.

The director turned to the Arthurian legend for his next picture, writing (with Rospo Pallenberg) the stylish Excalibur with Helen Mirren.

His next film, The Emerald Forest, was an eloquent polemic against the destruction of the environment and a box office hit.

In a real change of pace, Boorman followed with the most conventional film of his career, the autobiographical Hope and Glory, which captured a child's innocent delight at the disruption of the Blitz.

Where the Heart Is, a disappointing farce about 80s values with faint echoes of Shakespeare's King Lear, was just a little too outlandish to take seriously.

He missed again with 1995's Beyond Rangoon, an examination of the political intrigues in 1980s Burma (Myanmar).

Pouring out all his love for his adopted homeland Ireland, the director startlingly rejuvenated his career with The General, a biopic of Irish crime lord Martin Cahill.

In 2001, he scored a critical hit with The Tailor of Panama, a South American spy yarn which gave Pierce Brosnan the chance to send his 007 role up.