Wexler, Haskell (1925– )

US cinematographer and film director. A distinctive visual stylist, he photographed a number of major Hollywood films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which he won an Academy Award. He also branched out into writing, directing, and producing movies, most of which were documentaries that allowed him to express his own progressive political sympathies; the best known of these, Medium Cool (1969), mixed a fictional plot with documentary footage.

Wexler was born in Chicago, Illinois. After making industrial and educational movies for approximately ten years, he broke into feature films as cameraman for the semidocumentary The Savage Eye (1959). He won his second Academy Award for the cinematography of Bound for Glory (1976).