The director John McTiernan was born in Albany, New York, on 8 January 1951, and revolutionised the way Hollywood shot action films. In 1985, he wrote and directed his first film, Nomads, a ghost story that introduced the actor Pierce Brosnan to audiences. He began working with producer Joel Silver and 20th Century Fox, for which he directed Predator in 1987, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead. He then adapted Tom Clancy’s novel The Hunt for Red October (1990), a high-tension submarine movie starring Sean Connery, with whom he would work again in his next film, Medicine Man (1992). In Last Action Hero (1993), which once more starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, he parodied his favourite genre with an ingenious use of mise en abyme. In 1994, he directed Die Hard with a Vengeance, a high-octane sequel to Die Hard. In 1999, he made the epic The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas as an Arab ambassador who lands among the Vikings in the year 922. This was followed by two remakes, the superb The Thomas Crown Affair, again starring Pierce Brosnan, and Rollerball in 2002, based on the Norman Jewison film. His latest film to date is Basic, a military thriller starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.