Peter Medak

Hungarian-born Peter Medak escaped to England after the 1956 uprising in his homeland. He spent an apprenticeship rising from assistant cameraman to second assistant director with the 1962 remake of "The Phantom of the Opera." The following year, he began directing for TV for Universal and entered features in 1968 with "Negatives." Medak was responsible for one of the most deliriously vicious satires of English upper-crust folly, "The Ruling Class" (1972), featuring a tour de force central performance by Peter O'Toole. The director demonstrated his comedic touch with the middling "Zorro, the Gay Blade" (1981). The best known of Medak's subsequent films, "The Krays" (1990), was a violent look at a rather different segment of English society which featured pop singers Gary and Martin Kemp in the roles of two of Britain's most notorious gangsters while "Let Him Have It" (1991) was a based-on-fact story of a 50s murder case that involved a teenager of questionable intelligence. He also helmed the stylish contemporary noir "Romeo Is Bleeding" (1993). More recently, Medak has concentrated on small screen work, helming episodes of the acclaimed NBC series "Homicide: Life on the Street" and the TNT remake "The Hunchback" (1997), starring Mandy Patinkin and Salma Hayek.