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.