Cuarón, Alfonso (1961– )

Mexican film director and producer, one of the most successful of his generation. He co-wrote with his brother Carlos as well as directed and produced Y Tu Mamá También/And Your Mother Too (2002), an erotic Spanish-language film starring Gael García Bernal that achieved international success and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He gained a much wider audience still in 2004 with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film in the Harry Potter series, based on the children's fantasy novels by J K Rowling and starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Other work includes modern adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (1995) and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1998), as well as an adaptation of P D James's dystopian novel The Children of Men (2006). He frequently works with Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (1964– ).

He was born and grew up in Mexico City. He studied philosophy and filmmaking at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and worked as a television technician and director. He directed his first feature film, Solo Con Tu Pareja/Love in the Time of Hysteria, a black comedy about a playboy who contracts AIDS, in 1991, which led to US director Sydney Pollack hiring him to direct an episode of the popular cable television series Fallen Angels in 1993.