26.08.1944 (80 years)
Sir Alan William Parker (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer and screenwriter. Parker's early career, beginning in his late teens, was spent as a copywriter and director of television advertisements. After about ten years of filming adverts, many of which won awards for creativity, he began screenwriting and directing films. Parker is noted for having a wide range of filmmaking styles and working in differing genres. He has directed musicals, including Bugsy Malone (1976), Fame (1980), Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982), The Commitments (1991) and Evita (1996); true-story dramas, including Midnight Express (1978), Mississippi Burning (1988), Come See the Paradise (1990) and Angela's Ashes (1999); family dramas, including Shoot the Moon (1982), and horrors and thrillers including Angel Heart (1987) and The Life of David Gale (2003).His films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and six Academy Awards. Parker was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the British film industry and knighted in 2002. He has been active in both British cinema and American cinema, along with being a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain and lecturing at various film schools. In 2013 he received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, the highest honour the British Film Academy can give a filmmaker. Parker donated his personal archive to the British Film Institute's National Archive in 2015.