A crowd-pleaser of the first magnitude, Richard Donner knows how to entertain audiences. He makes no pretense of trying to overtly educate or pontificate - his films are popcorn movies pure and simple; they make money (five have grossed over $100 million) and audiences love them.

Born Richard Schwartzberg in New York in 1939, Donner was exposed to films from the earliest age - his grandfather owned a movie theatre and young Dick spent hours engrossed in the films being screened. He pursued a career in acting before a bad rehearsal of a live TV drama in the 1950s changed the course of his life. Convinced that Donner couldn't take direction, the drama's director, Martin Ritt, hired the youngster as an assistant.

Eventually Donner worked his way to Hollywood, and by the mid-60s had become one of the hardest working directors in television, counting episodes of "Wanted: Dead or Alive," "Get Smart", "Gilligan's Island," "Combat!", "The Fugitive" and "The Twilight Zone" among his credits. 
By the early 1970s Donner had a few low-budget films under his belt (including the 1968 post-Rat Pack Peter Lawford/Sammy Davis Jr. comedy Salt and Pepper) and had scored high ratings with the Linda Blair TV drama "Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic." Then in 1975 he unearthed a script entitled "The AntiChrist," got Gregory Peck to star, changed the name to The Omen (1976) and sealed his fate. Donner began directing an impressive series of hits that including Superman (1978), The Toy (1982), Ladyhawke, The Goonies (1985) and Scrooged (1988). Amidst all this success Donner found time to marry fellow producer Lauren Schuler Donner, produce the highly successful HBO series "Tales from the Crypt," and forge a lucrative friendship with Mel Gibson, whom he met before filming what would become one of the most fruitful film franchises of all time - the Lethal Weapon series. Donner directed all four Lethal Weapon films, and also helmed Gibson in Maverick (1994) and Conspiracy Theory (1997).

Beloved by actors for his laidback style and desire to see everyone on his sets having fun, Donner is currently at work preparing to shoot Timeline, a time travel thriller based on Michael Crichton's bestseller, due to be released in 2003.

Credit: amctv.com