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.