Jay Roach

A British spy and an accident-prone nurse helped make producer-director Jay Roach one of the most successful comedy filmmakers in motion picture history. He made his feature debut with "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (1997), Mike Myers' raucous spoof of 1960s pop culture, and later helmed both of its increasingly raunchy sequels, "Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me" (1999) and "Austin Powers in Goldmember" (2002). He immediately followed these with "Meet the Parents" (2000), which delivered the improbable comedy team of Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, and its sequel, "Meet the Fockers" (2004). The latter was the highest grossing comedy ever made, and paved the way for Roach to lend his talents to projects as a producer. He showed an equally golden touch in that capacity by overseeing such box office winners as "50 First Dates" (2004) and "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: (2006). In 2008, he showed that broad comedy was not the only color in his directorial palette by helming the Emmy-winning "Recount," a dramatization of the behind-the-scenes politics in the 2000 Presidential election, followed with "Game Change" (HBO, 2012), an inside look at the 2008 presidential campaign. Roach's astounding track record, garnered over a remarkably brief period of time, showed him to be a filmmaker with an unerring knack for understanding and even developing moviegoers' tastes in 21st century comedy.