Robert Zemeckis

I had no life. "You hear so much about the problems with television" he said "but I think that it saved my life. 1978's I Wanna Hold Your Hand (starring Nancy Allen) and 1980's Used Cars (starring Kurt Russell) were well-received critically with Pauline Kael going into particular rhapsody over the latter film but both were commercially inert.

His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004) Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009). ". Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare including 1994's Forrest Gump for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.