Robert Harmon

Robert Harmon worked his way up the ladder in Hollywood, starting out as a still photographer, and eventually working as a second unit director before making his feature directorial debut with the controversial thriller, "The Hitcher." Written by Eric Red, the film stars C. Thomas Howell as a young man on a road trip who encounters a disturbingly calm serial killer (Rutger Hauer). The film was a cult hit, but its brutality earned it the condemnation of several prominent critics, including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Despite his evident talent, Harmon never had quite that level of success in feature films again. He directed "Eyes of an Angel," starring John Travolta as a man fleeing mobsters with his young daughter, and the modest hit Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle "Nowhere to Run." He directed some television movies, and two episodes of "Homicide: Life on the Street," before returning to cinemas with the horror flick "They," about a grad student whose childhood nightmares seem to be coming to life, and "Highwaymen," a gritty revenge drama that took him back to the existential road-bound thrills of his debut. Neither of those films did particularly well at the box office, and Harmon returned to television. In 2004, he directed Tom Selleck as Dwight Eisenhower in "Ike: Countdown to D-Day," and he has since done several made-for-television movies starring Selleck as Robert B. Parker's alcoholic small town police chief, Jesse Stone. He also directed Selleck on several episodes of the police family drama series "Blue Bloods."