Hitchcock, Alfred (Joseph) (1899–1980)

A promotional still for the Hitchcock film The Birds, an adaptation of a story by Daphne du Maurier made in 1963, shows the film director posing with a seagull and a raven.

English film director, a US citizen from 1955. A master of the suspense thriller, he was noted for his meticulously drawn storyboards that determined his camera angles and for cameo walk-ons in his own films. His Blackmail (1929) was the first successful British talking film. The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) are British suspense classics. He went to Hollywood in 1940, and his work there included Rebecca (1940; Academy Award), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963).

Championed by the French New Wave critics and film-makers, his films have been hugely influential on and much imitated by film-makers around the globe. His last film was the comedy thriller Family Plot (1976). He also hosted two US television mystery series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–62) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963–65). He was the recipient of the American Film Institute's life achievement award in 1979, and was knighted in 1980.