Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. oping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.

Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer. In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer.

Kubrick was noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, the variety of genres he worked in, his technical perfectionism and his reclusiveness about his fims and personal life. He worked far beyond the confines of the Hollywood system, maintaining almost complete artistic control and making movies according to the whims and time constraints of no one but himself, but with the rare advantage of big- studio financial support for all his endeavours. Nominated several times for Oscars for both writing and directing, his only personal win was for the special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, though his films have won many Oscars and other awards in other departments.

Known for such film titles as "Dr. Stranglove," "Spartacus," "The Shining," "A Clockwork Orange," "Lolita," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut."

More about the director: http://kubrickfilms.warnerbros.com/