Alfred Hitchcock

Biography:

Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer recognized as one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema. Born on 13th August 1899 in Leytonstone, London, Hitchcock joined the film industry in the early 1920s, where he had worked as a draftsman, advertisement designer, and title card designer for silent movies. His directorial debut film, The Pleasure Garden, was made in 1926 and he later went on to make films such as The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, which made him popular in the early stages of his career. His famous films from Britain, namely The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes helped him gain a reputation for his suspense and psychological approach to the stories. In 1939, he relocated to Hollywood, where his first Hollywood film, Rebecca, won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1940.

Hitchcock is famously known as the “Master of Suspense” and has directed around 50 feature films in his six decade long career. Some of his most famous movies are Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Though he won five nominations for Best Director in the Academy Awards, he never won the competition; however, he won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971 followed by AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979. He was famous for his brief appearance in all of his films and also for hosting Alfred Hitchcock Presents from 1955 to 1965. He was knighted in 1980 by Queen Elizabeth II and died on 29th April 1980 in Los Angeles.